Peel Street eatery closed by fire department
Ferreira Café’s Peel Street terrasse was shut down abruptly Friday evening by firefighters, when it was full of Grand Prix visitors. The owner is not happy and there’s noise all over social media about it Saturday morning.
Other restaurateurs in the area also had their terrasses closed without warning. It’s still to be made clear why resto owners who had received city approval for their terrasses were treated like this. I suspect some internal power struggle was being acted out, but it may never come to light.
By Saturday, the swoop is being blamed on “confusion” and the mayor has tweeted, if not an apology, words meant to soothe: “Nous avons tous été ébranlés par le témoignage de la restauratrice du Ferreira café, dont la terrasse a été fermée hier soir par les équipes du Service de sécurité incendies de la Ville de Montréal pour des raisons de sécurité. Les équipes du SIM ont confirmé la conformité des terrasses de la rue Peel et elle pourront toutes réouvrir aujourd’hui.”
Joey 11:56 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
Shades of the fire department forcing the city to move the completed Clark bike path median a few centimetres – like then, this feels like the fire department flexing its muscles in front of the mayor… the inevitable lawsuits will be fun to watch play out.
Ian 12:34 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
That’s not a fair comparison, the Clark debacle was a planning kludge that dudnt leave enough room for firetrucks or ambulances to pass – this terrasse thing is all temporary construction. The Clark planted medians were a planning debacle of an entirely different order of magnitude.
Given how fire-prone Mile End has been historically I’ll take the side of the fire department over the indignant blatherings of Alex Norris.
TBH the Crescent street situation sounds more like somebody forgot to pay off an inspector.
Kate 12:35 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
CBC radio news hinted at an element not mentioned in those text versions: it’s possible that the restaurants put up sheltering roof structures that had not been approved by the city when the rain moved in. But it will have to play out.
Joey 15:04 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
As the story develops there’s more nuance and it’s clear that the restaurants didn’t do every little thing the fire department told them to, so maybe enough with the were IF videos?
@Ian how far off were the measurements? I seem to recall the distance seeming trivial but I can’t remember specifically.
Ian 15:13 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
It was actually the residents that called it in and fire trucks couldn’t pass. The concrete median was reduced from 1.8 to 1.5 metres, so 30cm or about a foot. They also had to put in gaps to facilitte snow removal. It was not a negligible mistake, and at immense cost to redo.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/bike-lane-street-too-narrow-1.4759346
On social media of course Alex Norris was abusive and condescending as always, Plante finally had to step in and apologize. This and bagelgate are why he’s basically not allowed to talk to media on behalf of PM anymore.
Joey 16:27 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
I suppose the lesson learned was don’t bother trying to keep two lanes of parked cars. I bet that factored into the thinking around the new bike path in Parc Ex. Clark could have been an interesting bike-first street, actually.
Ian 16:39 on 2024-06-08 Permalink
I would have hoped the lesson learned was to actually make urban refection plans that involve careful measurements and not lie about it if you didn’t, but hey.