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For three long days last fall, Irwin watched as a steady stream of residents appealed, cajoled and downright begged members of the city’s planning committee not to approve the project, which had already won a thumbs-up from bureaucrats.

It didn’t feel like the community’s concerns were actually heard, she recalls, and the final vote confirmed as much. Six votes for, three votes against the shelter. Council endorsed the plan five days later by a vote of 16-7.

“We feel betrayed by the city because they didn’t listen,” Irwin says.

That feeling runs deep in Vanier, yet the enduring opposition to the Salvation Army’s plan may run ever deeper. The shelter proposal isn’t just wrong for this neighbourhood, opponents say. It’s wrong, period.

Wrong location, wrong size, wrong model.

“It’s not NIMBY, it’s nowhere,” says McConville, who decided at the last minute to enter the mayor’s electoral race (he’s run and lost twice previously in Rideau-Vanier ward). “There is no doubt such a huge concentration of homeless people will turn any area into a ghetto.”

Now that council’s decision has sunk in and both sides gird for battle at the OMB, a hearing that could be at least another year away, Vanier finds itself in a purgatory of sorts.

While signs of investment and renewal along Montreal Road are elusive, a strong housing market continues to bring new people to the area who are attracted by urban living at a reasonable price.

Photo by Ashley Fraser / Postmedia

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Drew Dobson takes a seat on the new patio outside Finnigan’s Pub, which is less than a 100-metre dash east of where the Salvation Army wants to put its $50-million shelter complex.