Panel likes Chinatown replacement concept
Insurers say no to property owners on taller building
The city’s urban design review panel likes the concept for a mixed-use building in Chinatown that would replace the previous structure destroyed by fire in 2015. If only it could be taller. The owners of 601 Somerset St. W., Shelley and Jamie Helmer, are constrained by their insurance company, which they say will only permit them to build something close to what stood there before.
Their proposed three-storey building at Percy Street would have commercial space at street level and eight apartments spread over the two upper floors.
The Centretown community design plan would allow the property to have five storeys, frustrating the owners who are at the mercy of their insurance company.
The good piece of news, however, is that the outside experts who sit on the city’s design review panel like the look of the proposed replacement building.
Alex Leung of grc architects walked the panel through the concepts during a formal review session on Thursday at city hall. The new building’s facade would have beige brick, cement board sidings and panels and metal siding.
The owners “just want to do something nice for the neighbourhood,” Leung told the panel.
The four experts on the panel generally thought the concept to be handsome and offered some design suggestions to the architect when it came to the side facing Somerset Street and a solid portion of the wall along Percy Street.
The property is currently a caged pit where buildings once stood.
Fire ripped through four businesses and apartment units at the corner of Somerset and Percy streets on Oct. 15, 2015, causing plumes of smoke to fill the air over Chinatown. Roofing work caused the accidental fire.