Wellington Oracle

The site of the old Honeywell building at the corner of Parkdale and Spencer has been many things to many people in its day – barracks, factory, research facility, soda pop bottler – and it’s now home to a strip of thriving workshops, salons, and galleries. These new shops bring services and no small amount of cultural attraction to what was recently a moribund and derelict streetscape.

But step around the corner from those same businesses and walk through the parking lot of one of the last authentic taverns in the city – just across the street from the Parkdale market- and the scene takes a horrible turn for the worse.

In a sunny courtyard that many café owners across the region would surely give their eyeteeth to manage sits what might be the biggest pile of trash between the Ottawa River and the Trail Road landfill. Garbage bags tossed and left to rot, old mattresses propped against the wall, oil drums slowly rusting on their sides, twisted refuse of every description – it has to be seen to be believed.

In a properly-run city – one where property standards inspectors had the resources to actually do their jobs– a clean-up order would have been posted and enforced years ago.

And what paucity of imagination on the part of the property owners! Scant meters from a busy outdoor market and with creative entrepreneurs already on site, the best idea they can come up with is to use 600 square meters or more of sheltered sunlit space as a way to save money on dumpster fees.

With commercial property owners like this in charge of the neighbourhood’s building stock, it’s a wonder we have any amenities at all.