Change coming to Rideau St. pedestrian overpasses

The latest twist in the dramatic reimagining of Rideau Street is a plan to remove one of two aging pedestrian overpasses and replace the other with a sleek new walkway in the sky.

The Freiman Bridge was built in the early 1980s as a way to connect the Mackenzie King Bridge and the Transitway to the ByWard Market area via the shopping mall.

The city owns the bridge, but the costs for construction, use and maintenance over the years have been split between the city, Hudson’s Bay Company and Cadillac Fairview Corp., which owns the mall, as part of a 50-year agreement.

Around the same time, HBC and the mall’s previous owner built a second, smaller bridge west of the Freiman Bridge, but the city bears no responsibility for it.

Now, according to a report slated for discussion at next week’s finance committee meeting, Cadillac Fairview has come up with a $3-million plan to refurbish the Freiman Bridge as part of its $360-million mall makeover that’s currently underway.

The new walkway would match the mall’s shiny new façade and would likely be completed later this year or early next.

The city is pleased with the plan because it would complement the objectives of the Rideau Street streetscaping initiative and free Ottawa taxpayers of future responsibility for the maintenance, repair and future demolition of the current bridge.

But there’s a catch: The city would pay Cadillac Fairview $400,000 — the estimated net value, in today’s cash, of future operating and capital costs — and waive an estimated $50,000 in encroachment fees for use of the Rideau Street right-of-way during the bridge replacement.

The city would also give the company a break on air rights — the leasing of the air above city property — to the tune of $335,000.

As for the second pedestrian overpass — the one closer to the intersection of Rideau and Sussex — it would be removed completely.

“It’s going to look a lot better than it does today,” said RideauVanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury. The enclosed, unpainted metal structure currently there will be replaced with a glassy walkway, in keeping with the mall’s updated look.

The city anticipates north-south pedestrian traffic flow between the Mackenzie King Bridge and the ByWard Market will shift significantly once the Confederation line station on Rideau Street opens, while, at the same time, the mall’s centre of gravity is also shifting eastward as part its expansion.

All of these factors combined made the second bridge obsolete, Fleury said.

The report does not include a rationale for how the city reached the $400,000 figure, but Fleury said Tuesday that amount is less than the cost of demolishing one of the bridges and removes any future financial responsibility.

Fleury said he’s always been in favour of removing both bridges, but the mall and HBC pushed to keep one of the connections.