One Ottawa business owner whose store was broken into on Saturday night says the incident is a “symptom to a problem” in the community.
Jennifer Heagle, co-owner of the Red Apron in Centretown, spoke to OBJ Monday about the issues that have concerned her over the past few weeks, which culminated in a late-night break-and-enter of her business on Saturday.
Heagle said she’s met with Ariel Troster, city councillor for Somerset Ward, and Stephanie Lemieux, a community police officer for the area, to talk about the growing number of safety concerns surrounding her business, such as drug use on her property and vandalism to her storefront at 410 Gladstone Ave. near Bank Street.
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“The warm weather is coming and it tends to be a time of year where we experience a lot more activity on our premises after hours. We’re really concerned this year, because it’s never great and we’ve seen an increase in certain activities around our property,” Heagle told OBJ.
Heagle said she spoke to Troster and Lemieux about how security issues like these are arising due to a lack of funding and the closures of community services such as food banks and safe consumption sites.
“We do a lot of work with local food banks like the Centretown Community Food Centre and the Parkdale Food Centre. We’ve donated probably close to $80,000 to both of those organizations over the last few years and we know the demand (for those services) has increased … but the funding for them has not. We see the impact of these services not being provided and we’re fearful that we’re going to pay the price for that,” Heagle said.
The Somerset West Community Health Centre’s supervised drug consumption site was closed earlier this year. As it is a provincial issue, Heagle said she spoke with Ottawa Centre MPP Catherine McKenney about her concerns.
“We saw the closure of our supervised consumption site three or four weeks ago. The closure of that site is definitely driving a lot more drug consumption into the streets and onto personal property for residents and businesses in the community. We’d like to have our safe consumption site back. The lack of that facility is putting a lot of pressure on the few other resources that are out there to support people in need,” she said.
The Red Apron is not the only business that has seen the impact of these issues, Heagle said. Neighbouring businesses have had to “level-up security” by installing gates around their storefronts, while students at Glashan Public Elementary School have witnessed drug use in the school yard.
Though Heagle said she has spoken to the Centretown BIA, she isn’t sure how much they can do to help.
“I don’t think it’s a lack of knowledge of what the problem is. All you have to do is drive around the streets or talk to any business owner and you can see the problem very clearly,” she said.
A quicker response from police and the 211 community services helpline would be appreciated, Heagle said.
“We have to look to the various organizations for the support they are able to provide. In the case of the police, a faster response time is always appreciated because on the rare occasions that we’ve had to call the police, we don’t always get a response as quickly as we would hope,” she told OBJ.
She said she and her business partners have been interviewing security companies to watch over the business while it’s closed, but this measure will cost them thousands of dollars a year.
“We don’t want to be up 24/7, watching our security cameras so that we can take action when necessary. (Additional security) is a service that, if we need it, we’ll have to pay for and it’s not going to be inexpensive. I don’t know what else we can do because we’ve kind of done everything,” she said.
In recent years, Red Apron has been a victim of other forms of vandalism, including a patio fire this winter. Despite such issues, Heagle said that she doesn’t think Centretown is a bad place to do business.
“We’ve been operating in this community for 20 years. We love this neighbourhood. When it comes to break-ins, I don’t think we have a higher incidence rate. I’ve lived in different communities. I’ve had businesses in other communities. Break-ins are just a part of operating a business,” she said.
Heagle said she thinks the incident is “a symptom of a problem, and the problem needs to be resolved or addressed in a more holistic way.”
“Centretown is not a bad community. It’s not a dangerous community. We’re just a community in crisis right now,” she said.
