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Ottawa Council’s planning committee has already signed off on the demolition and replacement of a Centretown hotel and office complex, but the work could be held up by a new attempt to protect the 40-year-old structures with a heritage designation.

The bid comes from Sarah Jennings, a heritage building advocate, a boutique property developer herself, and the wife of the complex’s designer, Ian Johns. The site is now owned by Morguard Corp., which wants to tear down the defunct hotel and an adjoining low-rise building at Sparks and Bay streets and replace them with a 27-storey modern hotel and a 23-storey condo building.

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Johns worked for a company run by prominent land developer Bill Teron. It built the 350 Sparks St. complex to anchor the west end of Sparks Street and add buildings that would be a medium-height transition between taller ones downtown and shorter ones just to the west

The existing buildings are brick, contrary to the fashion in the 1960s and ’70s for concrete, Jennings’ application says, and they’ve held up well compared to other buildings of the era.