{"id":5858,"date":"2011-05-31T00:03:34","date_gmt":"2011-05-31T04:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=5858"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:09:38","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:09:38","slug":"the-mill-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/05\/31\/the-mill-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mill, revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
"Hmmm...what's this? A note? Trouble about the Old Mill story, you say? Damn!"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several weeks ago I posted on the recently-announced plans <\/a>to turn the Thompson-Perkins Mill — the site of the late and unlamented Mill Restaurant — into a brewpub.<\/p>\n

After going discussing the site’s major shortcoming — basically that the multi-lane roadways that surround it make it far too removed from natural pedestrian traffic patterns, despite its proximity to the downtown core — I concluded that:<\/p>\n

..l<\/em>ike so many of the riverbank amenities in our city, despite its proximity to us, (The Mill) might as well be miles away for those of us who are on foot. A multi-lane “cordon sanitaire” protects the facility from contamination by pedestrian traffic from either the south or the east. And when we think of where we like to dine in Ottawa, we think of the Market, Elgin Street, Wellington Street West; places where pedestrians are clearly welcome to explore and mingle.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Can a pub cut off from the life of the city around it survive as a drive-to location? Certainly there are successful road-house style bars in the suburbs, but I suspect that when customers get this close to the core they want something more; they are drawn by the idea that they might pop in somewhere else for dessert and coffee, or just stroll the busy sidewalks with hundreds of others, letting their senses absorb the sights and sounds. It is just this sort of variety that makes the urban experience so attractive.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course I wish the operators of the new pub at the Thompson-Perkins site all the best luck. But as long as their landlords insist on routing what is essentially an expressway just a few meters from their front door, I suspect that the Mill will continue to occupy the same place in our mental landscape — well off the beaten track.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The week after posting that I received a note from Spacing Ottawa contributor Kalle Hakala reminding me of a CBC report that should<\/em> have gone some way to informing the post, but clearly hadn’t. I made a mental note to update the post with his comments,\u00a0 but my mental notes are not what they used to be, and it wasn’t until today that I spotted his note again. So before I have another lapse in cognition, here is Kalle:<\/p>\n

You should know that the NCC is planning to put bike lanes on the Portage Bridge, possibly as early as this summer. At the same time, I understand they are proposing pedestrian crossings of the Wellington\/Portage intersection (which currently forbids peds from crossing at grade).<\/em><\/p>\n

…the NCC doesn\u2019t have anything on their website, but here is a CBC story from a few weeks ago<\/a> that explains it.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what do Spacing readers think? Will proper ped crossings go a long way to bringing The Mill into the realm of the urban and accessible, or will it still be a riverbank roadhouse retreat best reached by car?
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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