Calls for change to the ByWard Market District Authority have been put forward after the authority’s executive director left her position late last week.
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Calls for change to the ByWard Market District Authority have been put forward after the authority’s executive director left her position late last week.
The BMDA confirmed in a statement to OBJ on Monday that it had terminated executive director Victoria Williston after seven months in the role.
“The Board of Directors of the ByWard Market District Authority (BMDA) has decided to move in a new direction, which will require different leadership,” the statement read. “This is an internal and private matter, so the Board will not comment further.”
In a LinkedIn post this weekend, Williston said her time with the organization “has come to an end,” adding that she is “proud of that work, and prouder of the people who did it alongside me.”
“The dial moved. You can see it walking through the district any given day. More people, more life, more reason to stay a while. That shift belongs to a lot of hands, and I'm glad mine were among them,” wrote Williston, who joined the organization in January 2024 as communications and marketing manager.
Williston stepped into the executive director role in January, replacing Zachary Dayler, who left the previous September after five years. At the time, the BMDA board said Williston was the best candidate as she was “uniquely qualified to steward the organization into its next chapter and to advance the ByWard Market’s role as a vital public space rooted in inclusion, entrepreneurship, and city-building.”
On Monday, Barry Padolsky, an architect and heritage consultant who has spent three decades working in the ByWard Market, told OBJ that the move suggests that the city realizes that reform is needed.
“One of the things local merchants have been trying to persuade Mayor (Mark) Sutcliffe and (Councillor) Stephanie Plante is that the district authority needs to include voices from the local business community who know the Market really well and who form the commercial base of the Market.”
On Sunday, Padolsky sent an email to the mayor and councillors listing recommendations for reform of the BMDA, including:
- Reforming the BMDA board by appointing persons with local experience and “skin in the game,” such as local merchants and landowners and representatives from the Lowertown Community Association, the Ottawa Board of Trade, Ottawa Tourism and the National Capital Commission;
- Reforming BMDA meetings, agendas, decisions and budgets so that they are open to the public and fully transparent;
- Sharing and consulting on plans and events to celebrate the ByWard Market’s 200th anniversary in 2027;
- Reconsidering aspects of the $194-million ByWard Market Public Realm Plan implementation;
- Addressing and mitigating the issues of homelessness, drug abuse and violence;
- Reactivating ByWard’s historic Farmers' Market.
“I’m a lover of cities and a promoter of the city of Ottawa,” said Padolsky, who has been supporting a group called the ByWard Market Building Tenants Alliance. “I’m an activist as well as being an urbanist and so hence I’m committed to trying to do whatever I can as an individual to bring issues to public attention.”
Overall, he said the BMDA hasn’t properly communicated with stakeholders in the area.
“What it has demonstrated is that it has not really consulted with the business community in the Market, the vendors or the neighbourhood community associations and they have been acting arbitrarily in introducing changes in the streetscape and the Market,” he said.
“They have focused on what I guess you would call event planning, thinking that if you have performances in the Market that are in public that this will draw additional people and promote the prosperity of the Market. The problem is that many of the things that they have introduced have been counter-productive.”
OBJ reached out to the city for comment on Monday but did not hear back before press time.
In March, council approved a plan to “reimagine” the ByWard Market Building at 55 ByWard Market Square, as well as the parking garage at 70 Clarence St. and the York Street Plaza, in an effort to revitalize the area. According to documents reviewed by council, the ByWard Market Building would become “a vibrant, all-day destination that brings the ‘market’ back to the ByWard Market.”
Last month, 16 of the 17 businesses currently in the ByWard Market Building, calling themselves the ByWard Market Building Tenants Alliance, wrote a letter asking the mayor and council to repeal the plan.
With files from Marissa Galko
