Chinatown | |
|---|---|
Business Improvement Area (BIA) | |
 | |
| Country |  Canada |
| Province |  Ontario |
| City |  Ottawa |
Ottawa's Chinatown is located along Somerset Street west of downtown Ottawa. It runs from Bay Street in the east to Preston Street in the west (according to the Chinatown BIA). Signs for Chinatown continue along Somerset until Preston Street, and Chinese/Asian restaurants can be found even farther west.
The BIA was designated in 1989 and was named Somerset Heights until it was renamed Chinatown in 2005.
While officially designated "Chinatown," the area is home to businesses from many Asian cultures, such as Vietnamese, Korean and Thai. Restaurants specializing in Phở and dim sum are quite common. The Ottawa Chinatown has on one hand an urban character as it is not a cluster of strip malls, but on the other hand, it is focused on one commercial street, surrounded exclusively by residential areas.
A traditional Paifang archway has been built upon the entrance to the western section of Chinatown over Somerset Street, west of Bronson Avenue. It was unveiled in the early Fall of 2010.[1]
- ^ "Ottawa's Chinatown Celebrates Completion of New Gateway". Government of Canada. October 7, 2010. Retrieved May 21, 2022.
The City of Ottawa and the Somerset Street Chinatown Business Improvement Association (BIA), along with the governments of Canada and Ontario and the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China to Canada, today celebrated the completion of the Ottawa Chinatown Gateway project. The new gateway is an official entrance into Ottawa's Chinatown. It is also part of a "twin-city" project between Ottawa and Beijing, China.