Mainstreeter Staff

The Mainstreeter examines the checkered past, stagnant present and uncertain future of
  the Le Marquis apartment building at 95 Main Street, the 11-storey concrete monolith that dwarfs its surroundings at the busy corner of Main and Lees Avenue.

“A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” is the phrase that Winston Churchill coined to describe Russia’s actions in the early days of World War II. And here in Old Ottawa East we have our own equivalent of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma – it’s the 11-storey Le Marquis apartment tower at 95 Main Street at the corner of Lees Avenue.

Flipped on its side, the Le Marquis building might bear resemblance to the Cuban Embassy at the opposite end of Main Street between Riverdale Avenue and Mason Terrace – the same drab grey concrete exterior, the same imposing, Soviet-style block architecture. And like the Cuban Embassy, the aging monolith that looms large near the northern end of the community occupies a valuable chunk of Old Ottawa East real estate at the busy Main and Lees intersection.

For many motorists and cyclists residing outside of Old Ottawa East, these two hulking concrete blocks – the horizontal Cuban Embassy and the vertical Le Marquis apartment block – serve as unofficial access and egress points on Main Street, into and out of our community. They are distinctive to be sure, though not quite so colourful and cheery as those GLEBE signs on Bank Street that mark the northern and southern bounds of that community.

We ask some questions

And while it’s true that residents of Old Ottawa East know little about what goes on inside the Cuban Embassy on a daily basis, that’s generally the case at all of the estimated 129 embassies and high commissions in Ottawa. But for most of us in the community, the shroud of secrecy, or at least mystery, surrounding the current status of the Le Marquis apartment tower is equally dense and opaque.

So, The Mainstreeter set out to ask some questions about Le Marquis. First, we wanted to know the historical background of this building. When was it built, and by whom? What’s its current status? Is it abandoned, altogether devoid of tenants? Or is it just the retail spaces on the ground floor that have been vacated and left to sit empty these past few years? If indeed tenants do reside within the tower, how many are there? And if there are vacant units for rent, is the landlord actively trying to rent these units? Might it not help matters if the prominent signage on the front façade of the building listed all ten digits of the rental office phone number, and not just the last four – 4917?

Today, most would agree that Le Marquis has become something of an eyesore. But in the Ottawa of 1970, when it was constructed, the Le Marquis apartment building was the talk of the town. One long-time resident of Old Ottawa East recalls that the 11-storey building was “Ottawa’s skyscraper”, the tallest tower around.

In a 2015 article in spacing.ca entitled Neighbourhood Walk: Walkin’ Down Main, author Christopher Ryan referred to Le Marquis as Ala-Kantti’s “love song to concrete” on Main Street:

“Constructed in 1970, Le Marquis apartment was born during the latter part of the postwar apartment construction boom. The somewhat unremarkable 11-storey concrete structure was the project of Montreal-area developer Hy Adessky (operating as Centre Town Developments Ltd.) and, as with so many vertical homes of engineered concrete, it was designed by the firm of Ala-Kantti, Liff and Stefaniszyn. Adessky’s other Ottawa properties included the nearby Elgin Square and the River Park Terrace in the west end, among others.”

“Le Marquis spent a considerable amount of time in the news during the 1980s when it was part of Reddy Chavali’s highly controversial, tumultuous, and ultimately short-lived, rental empire. Today, things have quieted considerably and the apartment is an affordable home to many.”

(Editor’s Note: Though not the subject of this article, the history of the Chavali family’s real estate dealings in Old Ottawa East and elsewhere in the City during the 1980s is a remarkable saga in its own right. Even 40 years afterwards, internet posts and blogs still speak volumes.)

Half of the units may be vacant

Ryan’s 2015 conclusion that the apartment building is “an affordable home to many” seems not to be the case today, based on interviews with both a former and a current tenant of Le Marquis conducted by The Mainstreeter. The building contains predominantly bachelor and one-bedroom units, between 72 and 80 in total. The interviewees told us that somewhere between 30 and 35 of the units are currently rented and occupied by tenants. Most of the floors have only two to four units rented out of the eight units on each floor. Indeed, it was the lack of evening time lighting and curtains or drapes in most of the windows, coupled with the four vacant retail units on the ground floor, that have led many to believe that the building is completely empty.

According to one of the interviewees, tenants who have remained at Le Marquis typically do so because of the building’s prime location and the level of rents which, as Ryan noted in 2015, were affordable then and which seem to be below market prices today. According to the interviewees, however, the deteriorating condition of the building inside and outside effectively caps the rent that can be charged for the units.

Retail prospects seem bleak

And where once the building was a commercial hub with thriving small businesses on the ground floor, today there is nothing but old signage and debris, and according to the interviewees, dim prospects for new commercial tenants and scant effort to rent out the space. In happier times, over its first four decades, the space housed various stores, including a grocery, a barber shop, a beauty salon, a driving school and a satellite medical clinic operated by the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre.

It remains to be seen what the future holds for the Le Marquis apartment and its remaining tenants. A visual inspection of the exterior of the building confirms the increasing toll that the years have played, as discolored and crumbling concrete mars the façade and the underside of many of the balconies. Those we spoke to felt that the value of the land and the pro-development climate fostered by Ottawa’s Official Plan could see ownership of the building change hands and signal a possible reawakening and refurbishing of the concrete giant at the corner of Lees and Main.

And, oh yes, in the meantime, if you do wish to call the rental office, the full telephone number appears to be 613-569-4917.