Closed for 'far too long,' Magee House sidewalk finally reopens

The sidewalk in front of a 19th-centuryhouse that partially collapsed in Ottawa's Hintonburg neighbourhood nearly 15 months ago has finally reopened

Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper tweeted a photo of a stretch ofWellington Street W.early Friday afternoon showing the fencing and orange construction signs in front of the building had been removed.

"I obviously am thrilled. Residents have been putting up with this for far too long," Leiper later told CBC News. "It was an unsafe situation.There was no way we could've gone through another winter in the shape it was in."

Traffic and parking on the street have also returned to normal.

The approximately 140-year-old house crumbled in July 2018, and since then, the sidewalk and one lane of Wellington Street W.had been blocked off.

The councillor said the city had to allow the property owner to attempt to do the right thing before it could intervene which included injecting grout, building a concrete form to support the building.

Earlier this summer, city officials gave the owner until Aug. 2 to stabilize the building to their satisfaction, after which point the sidewalk was expected to open within three weeks.

Leiper said Ontario law would have to change the definition of a public safety hazard to empower the city to avoid a similar delay in the future.

Businesses have suffered, says BIA

"On paper, this was never an unsafe situation. That means we have to change some definitions in order to say it is unsafe and [ensure] the city is justified in acting more quickly than we have been able to," Leiper said.

The sidewalk closure lasted so long that in July, residents held a rally demanding it be returned to its normal state.

Dennis Van Staalduinen, the executive director of the Wellington West BIA, said businesses in the area have felt the impact.

"There are three businesses that have either changed moved or downsized over the course of the last year-and-a-half, and that's not to say that they haven't all suffered," he said.

"There's other businesses around here, I know, that have had the worst year of their lives."

Magee House owner Ovidio Sbrissasaid he did not want to alter the building over the last year as part of his investigation into why it collapsed in the first place.

"I still have a lot of work to do there. I wasn't in a rush to get the sidewalk open," he said.

Sbrissasaid he didn't understand the rush to reopen the sidewalk, adding thatno one had been injured while it was closed. He said herejects the city's engineering assessment of his property, and that there won't bewon't be any reconstruction work until at least next spring.

Leiper said Sbrissa would be sent the bill for the work the city had to perform to reopen the sidewalk.