This letter was hyped by the Citizen today. Wasn't sure where else to put it, so here it is:
Quote:
Re: World Exchange hopes to sign new theatre operator, Dec. 26.
On early Christmas Eve afternoon, a friend informed me that the cinemas at the World Exchange Plaza will not remain open after all past December. This literally breaks my aging heart.
(However, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed after reading on Thursday that Bentall Kennedy, which manages the World Exchange, is now working to reach a new deal with a different theatre operator sometime in the new year.)
While shopping in November, I found out that The Exchange Pub and Restaurant at the Rideau Centre closed while I was outside the country last fall, as well as the lovely bookstore on the mall where, if you were lucky, you could run into a "good" senator, MP or CBC or CTV News personality from time to time checking out the same books that you were.
I considered these locales special neighbourhood respite havens of mine, where the staff and management were always welcoming, service-oriented and joyful. I was the customer who showed up when the suburbanites and tourists vacated Centretown en masse.
I will miss these establishments very much, but most of all I regret not having been able to thank in person the people who made them a place where I wanted to go. I wish them all the best. They made up the fabric of the Ottawa that I learned to know and love.
Unfortunately, downtown Ottawa has lost its compass in recent years.
Those of us who live and spend their time and money in Centretown are watching its demise with bewilderment and sadness as condos are built by the dozen to block out the only thing that might be left: the sky.
I think of all those who lost their jobs in the tide of this year's corporate and municipal decisions and hope to see them in new establishments in 2014.
I wish for all our city leaders and planners to take the time to walk a mile in the shoes of those who reside downtown in 2014.
May there be some enlightenment to the bleak days of our winter besides electrical strings of seasonal glitz.
SuzAnne Doré, Resident of downtown Ottawa
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
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Sorry, but I shake my head at everything said here. So, does THE CITY run that book store or restaurant you liked, or did it just 'go under', as businesses sometimes do?
"This year's corporate and municipal decisions"???? huh?
And having more people living downtown (those damn condos in the middle of the city - who does that?) would somehow be bad for those businesses? Seems to me it is 'change' that is happening here, not a scorched earth retreat (a la NCC urban renewal).
Of course, SuzAnNe might just see anything other than complete stagnation and inertia as 'everything's destroyed', a sentiment we've seen in this city before.