NEIGHBOURHOOD ON THE MOVE

The Future is Bright

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BY TED SIMPSON

PHOTO BY LINDEN POLOS

In French the saying is “un mal pour un bien” which in essence means, “a bad thing so a good thing can come.” And that’s where the community of Vanier is at right now during the most brutal phase of the Montreal Road Revitalization project, with two years of demolition behind them and two years of construction still ahead.

“We’re starting to see all of the seeds that we’ve been sowing for the last four or five years now starting to pop up,” says Nathalie Carrier, the Executive Director of the Vanier BIA, an organization that represents the businesses and property owners of the neighbourhood. “Development is starting, we’re getting a lot more housing, a lot more commercial spaces that are viable and rentable, the street itself and the streetscaping is getting better, all of the stuff underground is being fixed and that allows for better development to come in the future.”

The Montreal Road Revitalization is a major infrastructure project from the City of Ottawa. Along with subterranean work comes a whole host of improvements to the streetscape. The $64 million project aims to, “construct a vibrant and welcoming main street with a wellbalanced transportation network that will allow residents and businesses to thrive,” according to the city. That includes burying overhead power lines between North River Road and de l’Eglise Street and adding new streetscaping features to Montreal Road including trees, streetlights, street furniture and improved sidewalks. The transportation aspect will be restructured into three lanes of traffic, two Eastbound and one Westbound, with bicycle lanes running in both directions.

For the remainder of this year, and probably well into the next, that means that Montreal Road is down to just one lane of Westbound traffic and no street parking, with side street access blocked off at nearly every intersection.

This construction project, in combination with the ongoing public health restrictions around the pandemic, is creating an unprecedented challenge for the local business community. “Sales are slower than usual, there’s COVID of course, but we’re also hearing people say that they can’t park or they can’t find a way to get here. It has even become very difficult to get our deliveries from suppliers,” says Michelle Dahdah, the Head Pastry Chef behind Quelque Chose Pâtisserie.

But they’re not losing sight of the good things to come and there are positive signs of growth for the business community. “This building is actually being torn down in about a year, so we have to move, but we want to stay here in Vanier with a new location because so many new people are coming here, like Little Victories Coffee that just moved in. I think this area has so much potential,” says Michelle.

And that idea of the neighbourhood evolving, from a place with a bad reputation to a hidden gem, has been catching on around the city. Many people have drawn the comparison that Vanier might be the new Hintonburg. But the community would tell you that Vanier is the next Vanier, in the sense that preconceived notions and comparisons can devalue the uniqueness of a neighbourhood. Vanier isn’t becoming anything other than a bigger, better version of what we know now, which is a neighbourhood built on diversity and creativity. Vanier boasts the highest population of newcomers to Canada, the highest population of Indigenous people in the city and largest concentration of artists in Ottawa.

So much of Vanier has been built, and is continuing to be built, by entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds. A great example of this can be found in the Mark Motors Group. You’ve probably heard of the controversies surrounding a new Porsche

dealership at the corner of Montreal Road and St. Laurent Boulevard. But you may not have heard the story of Louis Mrak, who was born in Slovenia in 1935 and came to Canada as a young man escaping communism with nothing but a suitcase and a few dollars. He founded Mark Motors on Montreal Road 62 years ago and his family still run that business to this day where they sell fine European cars, including Louis’ favourite brand, Porsche.

The Mrak family have gone to great lengths working with the city to ensure that the design of their business complements the revitalization of the street. This collaboration resulted in an improvement to the cycle track, where the dealership will give up three meters of their property to allow the track and sidewalk to continue through to St. Laurent. In the original plan the bicycle lane had been pinched off early due to a lack of space.

But it doesn’t really matter whether merchants sell cars or macarons or coffees; it’s the diverse and committed entrepreneurial spirit that has brought Vanier up to the precipice of change that it sits on today, and it’s their power that will continue through the other side of both this construction project and this pandemic to carry the community into a new era.

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