Rideau Street attack highlights strip with 'bad reputation'
Alicia K. Gosselin, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: April 2, 2015, Last Updated: April 2, 2015 4:33 PM EDT
It’s the most crowded strip of sidewalk on Rideau Street most nights: the blocks between Dalhousie and Sussex streets.
It’s the only section of the road with a restaurant open for business round the clock — and it’s seemingly a place where fast food, drunken chatter and illegal activity come together in the evening.
In the past few months, several assaults have been reported to the police in front of the MacDonald’s on Rideau. Most recently, an Ottawa man was sent to the hospital with serious injuries after being attacked by a group of people there Tuesday night. Last November, a young man also ended up in hospital after being attacked outside the restaurant.
“It has a bad reputation, but it’s because it’s one of the only places in that area open 24/7,” said Ottawa police Const. Marc Soucy of the Ottawa Police Services. “The late-night crowd congregates there. Chances are you’re going to get more calls there — people go where there’s light.”
Since March 18, there have been 26 illegal incidents reported around the Rideau Street block, according to the Ottawa Crime Mapping tool.
“There’s a lot of concentration of people there every day, so it’s obvious it will get more attention than other places,” said Soucy. “We get the same kind of thing at other Tim Hortons in the city because people go there when everything else is closed and they have longer hours.”
One of the day managers at MacDonald’s (who asked to remain anonymous) said he doesn’t experience much in the way of problems during the day, but it’s always after 4 p.m the area becomes a hub for mischief.
“In one week there have been two times my supervisor called me to tell me about some people fighting in front of my store,” he said. “If you come for one week during evening shifts, you can see what goes on here.”
Over the past couple of years, the management at the MacDonald’s has taken measures to increase safety in that location, such as ensuring full-time night security and stricter management of the crowds that come into the location.
For Mathieu Fleury, councillor for the Rideau-Vanier ward, the extra safety measures at the MacDonald’s seem to have made a difference, but he says there’s still more work to do.
“I think it’s gotten better, but it’s the type of thing that if you don’t keep on top of, it catches up,” said Fleury. “Walking on that strip at night, I’ve seen how that little section can be very intimidating . . . sometimes you do see some problematic exchanges, so it is on our radar.”
Still, Fleury said it makes sense to encourage more businesses in that area to stay open later.
“We really favour the businesses that are open late — when there’s vibrancy and people are active in that area, the less crime will happen because the drug exchanges or gang members would rather go to more of a hideout,” he said. “The more night use we have that’s not just driven towards going to bars and clubs, like Nuit Blanche or the Art Gallery, just complements the area.”
A recent project approved by City council called the Rideau/Arts Precinct Public Realm Plan aims to improve the streetscape mostly around the Rideau Centre and Arts Court. The vision is to thrive as the arts, entertainment, and shopping district of Ottawa’s downtown and be the hub of the city, effectively linking the central business district, the Canal precinct, the ByWard Market, Sandy Hill and the University of Ottawa, according to the official plan.
Peggy Ducharme, executive director of the Downtown Rideau BIA, said that as long as that strip on Rideau is perceived as problematic, the harder it will be to reach their goal.
“This address has been a recurring one from what we know,” said Ducharme. “If we are putting all this investment back in the street, then each one of these incidences is not helping us to that effect . . . so the community needs to have a conversation about this.”
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