Tommy & Lefebvre reconstruction: Intro and Part 3

As you probably recall, Tommy & Lefebvre suffered a fire at their Bank & McLeod location on the night of March 30-31 last year. At the time (links in the list below), I blogged photos from the following day, and the demolition of the corner building.

They're now close to reopening, so it's a good time to post photos from the rest of the demolition and reconstruction. Check back every two days at noon for the next post in the series (which will also be linked here after posting):

• Part 1 - Tommy & Lefebvre fire: Posted April 1, 2009. Includes photos of the building before the fire and the day after the fire, plus a video someone took of the fire.


• Part 2 - Down Down Down: Posted April 6, 2009. The first section is about the first stage of the T&L demo, and shows the mural revealed.


• Part 3: (This post.) Demolition of the second building, and temporary location


• Part 4: Demolition of the third building


• Part 5: Preparing the site, and rendering of the new building


• Part 6: Double post - laying the foundations, basement walls, and ground floor


• Part 7: Building the frame of the building


• Part 8: Walls and ceilings going up


• Part 9: The big reveal!

Part 3: Demolition of second building

The former Tommy & Lefebvre flagship store was actually three different connected buildings. This made operations a bit difficult, because it also meant three different sets of washrooms, and three different basements with three different stairways. Moving merchandise around was frustrating.

The corner building, built in the 1970's, was demolished first.

Where we left off in the last post, the second building had just come down:

Here you can see the division between the basements of the corner building and the second one.

The rubble piled relatively high for a one-storey building.

Five days later, these machines had taken care of it all. In this shot, you can also see the middle and rear segments of the third building, both of which are cinder block. Thanks to the fire doors, the third building suffered mostly smoke and water damage, and structurally was not too damaged. The truck in the background is unloading stock and customers' bikes.

Here's that rear segment with the parking lot in the foreground, looking relatively undamaged.

Back at the front of the building, you can make out the painted ads revealed by the demolition of the second building, as described in Part 2. There was also a rooftop courtyard.

Here's a closer shot of the painted ad. Some of the bricks at the front of the building have fallen off already, but you can tell that this façade was not original, as it cuts into the red vertical ad.

In this shot from the corner, you can get a decent idea of how the whole site looked. Taken a month after the previous shot, in early May 2009, you can see that a few more bricks are gone from the front of the building, along with the fence-like structure at the top of the façade. The reconstruction of Bank Street was also underway, hence the additional pylons in the roadway.

Days after the fire, T&L had set up a temporary location at 680 Bank in the Glebe, which had been Olympic Sport Centre for many years before being renovated into a short-lived non-sports store called the Pannier.

T&L occupied the location until at least the end of June, when I took this photo, but by late September 2009, it had become the new downtown location of Kunstadt Sports.

Tune in on Tuesday at noon for Part 4, showing the demolition of the third building.