Thursday, April 29, 2010

Tommy & Lefebvre Reconstruction: Part 5

The new T&L store opened yesterday at noon. I got there shortly thereafter and got some photos of the inside... which will wait until the end of this series.

Last time, I talked about the demolition of the last bit of the building. Today there are some things to see on the site preparations. Non-Construction site groupies might want to look away.

Toward the end of May 2009, a few days after the demolition started, the empty shell of the basement was cleared of debris, though the interior walls remained.

A week later, those walls were removed, too. If you zoom in, you can see where the floor joists used to fit into the wall. The hodepodge of colours, surfaces, and textures on the remaining wall looks like a piece of abstract art.

Not to mention the somewhat out-of-place chimney.

I'm not quite sure what these two holes were for; possibly they had been columns in the basement, or possibly the floor was simply broken up.

These two holes are where the ceiling beams connected to the wall, which are also visible in the Previous post.

The rest of the site has been covered over with sand until construction starts.

And in this view we see the whole site from further back on McLeod. The Bio-Ped Foot Care Centre sign isn't there any longer (it and the Café McLeod sign have been repurposed for the roof of the pedestrian walkway on Bank between Gladstone and McLeod. Look up next time you're walking through there).

The T&L demolition happened to occur at the same time as the Bank Street reconstruction was doing its digging. As a result, pedestrians had to walk along what was essentially a narrow ledge of ground lined by 6' Modu-Loc fencing. This photo was taken in late July 2009.

And it was around this time that T&L was applying for approvals, which were obtained in record time with the support of the CCCA. This is an early rendering, which was later modified to increase signage and enhance the cornice.

This is the last part of the series that looks at the demolition--the next part will be twice the usual length, and we'll get knee-deep in construction! Tune back in in two days.

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