Elliot Lake Collapse: Neglect, Greed Led To Cave-In, Inquiry Finds

ELLIOT LAKE, Ont. - Decades of incompetence, neglect, greed and dishonesty by a succession of owners, engineers and municipal officials led to the deadly cave-in of a northern Ontario mall two years ago, a judicial inquiry reported Wednesday.

In a scathing indictment of those who allowed the Algo Centre Mall to rust to the point of collapse, Commissioner Paul Belanger pulls few punches in holding those responsible to account.

Architect 'uncomfortable' with owner demand for parking on doomed mall's roof

ELLIOT LAKE, Ont. - The owner of the doomed Algo Centre Mall insisted on the novel idea of putting a parking deck above the shopping centre despite the reservations of the building's architect, a public inquiry heard Monday.

James Keywan, who designed the shopping centre, told the hearing into the deadly collapse of the garage that the owner-developer decided rooftop parking was the cheapest option.

"I'm very uncomfortable with that because there's retail space below," Keywan testified at the inquiry into the collapse last June that killed two women.

Elliot Lake mall patched 'on the cheap,' ex-manager says

A former manager of the Elliot Lake, Ont., mall says the owner was warned as far back as 2008 that if he didn’t make repairs to the mall roof it could collapse.

Brian England says he was with Bob Nazarian, the 66-year-old Richmond Hill businessman who owns the mall, when Nazarian was told of the consequences of not doing repair work to the mall’s roof.

“The architect plain and simply told Mr. Nazarian that if he didn’t proceed with these repairs,” said England, “that we could find that his structure was at the point of deterioration that it possibly could collapse.

“It was that clear.”