The owner of a small commercial plaza believes the demolition of buildings on either side of his property to accommodate widening Wellington Road for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lanes has emboldened thieves and vandals to target his building. On Monday morning, Pramod Kukadia was notified by a tenant of the yellow-brick plaza that the air conditioning in their unit wasn’t working. A repair crew discovered that two roof-top commercial HVAC units had been destroyed by thieves for what Kukadia estimates was less than a hundred dollars worth of copper components. Buying two new units and installing them with a crane could cost over $50,000. “These units are tens of thousands of dollars to replace, (and) the two tenants won’t have any air conditioning for a short period of time,” he tells CTV News. During the night, the copper thieves used a maintenance ladder mounted to the side of the plaza to get on the roof. “There’s a gate on it with a lock, but they cut the lock off,” explains a disheartened Kukadia. “Some of my (HVAC contractors) told me that there were other units (damaged) nearby as well. So it’s probably a group of people.” In preparation for widening the road, the City of London acquired and subsequently demolished a stretch of houses and commercial buildings on either side of the plaza at 100 Wellington Rd. However, because the plaza building is sufficiently setback from the curb, it wasn’t acquired by city hall. “There’s nobody around here watching at night now, so it’s kind of free wheeling for (thieves),” Kukadia argued. He says recently a daycare in his plaza had its playground equipment stolen by thieves who cut through a chain link fence. Problems with graffiti have also grown worse since the neighbouring buildings along the east side of Wellington were razed. Kukadia previously owned Curry’s restaurant next door before it was acquired by the city and demolished. He’s now taking costly steps to protect his plaza, “We’ve got security coming in every night, multiple times a night. We’ve installed some cameras and sensors up on the roof so if anybody goes up we will be notified right away.” Construction of the final section of BRT along Wellington Road, between Watson Street and Base Line Road, officially began on Sept. 2.
