Angel’s Café site for water-main work avoids ‘disastrous’ alternative: mayor

The city is still working out options for a café forced to move due to urgent water-main work. It's not the only space that will be impacted.

It’s the final days for a Montgomery business along the river for now as the city makes way for major water-main work near Edworthy Park.

The city terminated the lease for Angel’s Café, with the mayor saying using that site is the only option to get necessary work done to avoid “disaster.”

“It’s an unfortunate situation that we are in,” Jeromy Farkas said on Tuesday.

“But it is a necessary one in order for us to be able to move as quickly as possible and to be able to mitigate what would otherwise be a disaster. If we do not use this location near Edworthy Park, it would cause disastrous consequences by doing a cut-and-cover operation through Bowness and Montgomery.”

Instead of major disruptions to businesses along 16th Avenue N.W. that would have seen roads ripped up and deep trenches carved out to make way for the new pipe, the city is using micro-tunnelling to run the water-main replacement up to 30 metres underground.

The parking lot adjacent to Angel’s Café is being used as the main staging area for the bulk of the work to run a pipe parallel to the Bearspaw South feeder main.

Workers, heavy equipment and fencing limits access to the building and parking area.

Cathy Jacobs, the owner of Angel’s, is urging the city to allow her to return to the location after work is completed, without having to remove the building entirely.

“Let’s not move it. Let’s leave it all, abandon it for whatever time the city needs,” Jacobs said.

“I recognize the urgency. I recognize how important this is. But if we don’t have to do this, let’s not do this.”

There are also three buildings next to Angel’s that will be impacted significantly—two homes and a home converted to a business.

The city owns two of the pieces of property.

In a statement, the city says it is working with the tenants to support next steps.

It is not ruling out offering short-term hotel stays for people when construction is most active in the area.

“It’s going to be noisy, it’s going to be dirty. There’s going to be limited access into that area as we go forward. So I need to make sure Calgarians know there will be impacts around these localized construction sites,” said Michael Thompson, the city’s general manager of infrastructure services.

Thompson said the replacement steel pipe will arrive on site in early February.

Farkas said alternative locations for Angel’s Café are being worked on “behind the scenes.”

Jacobs says the establishment will shutter Sunday, and they are ordered to be gone from the building by next Thursday.