The city has bought the ill-reputed Cecil Hotel for $10.9 million and plans to knock the building down and build something else on the East Village site.
“I am a huge supporter of heritage preservation… but I don’t feel in this case there’s much to preserve,” says Druh Farrell, alderman for the inner-city ward that includes the Cecil site. Located metres away from the downtown Drop-In Centre, the hotel at Third St. and Fourth Ave. S.E. was the subject of about 1,700 calls to police last year alone. Earlier this month the tavern portion of the hotel lost its business licence because of risks to public safety.
Farrell says she’s celebrating the hotel’s end. “It’s a very important site,” she says. “It’s an entry way into the downtown and East Village from the northeast, and it’s been a site that’s been a blight on that part of the downtown for decades. It could have a much brighter future — a more positive contribution to the area.” She says the city is contemplating “a number of civic uses” for the site. A parkade is one of the possibilities being suggested, but Farrell says nothing’s been decided yet.
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