Retailers and residents in the ByWard Market are calling on Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and the City of Ottawa to take immediate steps to revitalize and improve safety in the popular Ottawa tourist area.
A group of “concerned retailers and residents of the ByWard Market” released a letter outlining their “ongoing concerns and need to get to the root of the problems” in the ByWard Market. They say they have met as a group and asked Sutcliffe to meet with them, but he refused, according to the letter dated Wednesday.
The letter is addressed to Sutcliffe, Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stephanie Plante, the ByWard Market District Authority, Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs, the head of the National Capital Commission and Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge. It outlines a series of demands, including:
- Make sure events do not occupy parking spaces on the streets for clients visiting local businesses and “make use of unused courtyards or already closed streets like William Street.”
- Allow clients to park for more than two hours if they renew their parking permit. “Clients are being ticketed when renewing their permit. It takes longer than two hours for a visit in the Byward market,” reads the release.
- Bring back fruit, vegetable and flower merchants to the Byward Market to give people a reason to visit. The group notes “all sorts of restrictions in the past resulted in the merchants leaving the Byward market and relocating.”
- Install more lights and monitored cameras to make sure the market is a safe place.
- Address the community issues by having officers patrolling the market. “Planning can occur at the social services agencies directly. No need to pay for such high rent at the Rideau Centre,” reads the release.
- Provide support to social services agencies and police to support the unhoused.
- Renovate the area and make it more appealing.
- Redefine the role of bylaw officers to address safety and parking issues.
- Relocate three of the four shelters to other areas of the city.
- Make sure the National Capital Commission “is part of the decision-making process and sits at the BMDA table. We are the national capital and we certainly don’t look like a capital like other countries to visitors,” the group says.
- Encourage small businesses and restaurants, while limiting the number of cannabis stores in the market.
- Utilize the unused courtyards for events planned by the BMDA – “no need to close down York Street and limit once again parking for our clients.”
The group is also asking the city to adjust the Bylaw that have taken an aggressive approach on issuing parking tickets, while disregarding other concerns, including noise, drugs and harassment towards visitors.
The BMDA was contacted by the group, but has not received an answer, reads the release.
The retailers and residents add that there has been no progress in the last year to revitalize the market. They want “the Byward Market District Authority to engage in conversations with the city of Ottawa mayor, as well as municipal council members and National Capital Commission to ensure that events in the market occur in unused courtyards and do not occupy any existing parking available to our clients and visitors,” reads the letter.
The group is calling for a “short term and five-year plan communicated to all residents and retailers” for the ByWard Market.
“First we want to be heard and taken seriously. We are in a crisis,” Gordon Harrison, Canadian Landscape Gallery, told CTV News Ottawa in a statement.
Harrison adds that the root of the issues must be identified in order to implement permanent solutions to make the market and national capital a successful and safe place.
CTV News has reached out to the mayor’s office for comments.