The popular Duluth St. restaurant Khyber Pass has admitted defeat in its struggle with the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough to keep its distinctive cedar façade.
“Nothing of it can be maintained,” said Nadia Ramisch, the daughter of restaurant owner, Faruk Ramisch. “We have to remove all of it, so there is no more hope.”
The restaurant had been banking on the borough’s willingness to compromise during negotiations over the structure, which was built without the proper permits in 2009.
In the intervening years, it has becoming something of a landmark in the Plateau neighbourhood. Now, Ramisch fears it’s become a community eyesore.
“When my husband was tearing the façade this week, people were mad when they were passing,” she said, in an interview with CJAD 800. “It looks really awful.”
The bottom half was removed so that city architects could take measurements.
Ramisch said she would have liked to have removed the entire structure at the same time, once the new plans had already been approved, in order to avoid showing the mess of nails and cracked stone for too long.
Instead, the structure will remain half built, half torn down until the end of winter.
“Since the bricks are so old and it’s a really old building, the wind goes right through and the restaurant is still open,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Plateau Mont-Royal borough says they've been patient with the restaurant's owners, adding the façade infringes on the public domain, and that the wood constitutes a fire hazard, among other things.