H&M is known for their affordable prices while still offering the latest trends and basics at a fraction of a cost of department store prices, all the while gaining international recognition for collaborating with higher end, ready-to-wear designers such as Versace, Marni, and Maison Martin Margiela.

When asked why H&M decided to come to Ottawa, Public Relations Manager for H&M Emily Scarlett told Apartment613, “We’ve always been looking for a location in Ottawa since we opened in Canada in 2004. We’ve been just waiting to find the perfect location so unfortunately it’s taken 9 years to find.”

“Finding the right location is part of our expansion principle since the company was founded in 1947.” Scarlett further explained, “This was the first time such a space was available in a great location like Bayshore.”

Despite Ottawa’s reputation for dressing conservatively, Scarlett suggests Ottawa shoppers will be able to find something no matter what their style is. H&M’s principle “is that people should be able to dress for their personality no matter what that is. We feel that you can find that at H&M … We’re very big about fashion and quality at the best price.”

Are Ottawa residents more keen for fashion finds at a lower price? Depends on who you ask. Recently a Joe Fresh store was added to St. Laurent Shopping Centre, and much like H&M, provides basics and trendier clothing for a modest price. Word is ZARA Kids might be arriving to Bayshore  as well. Simons, which offers a mix of low and high end clothing, recently confirmed a store opening in Rideau Centre in 2015. However, one of the more popular higher end department stores from the US, Nordstrom, is to arrive at Rideau Centre in the spring of 2014.

All of these recent developments pose a bigger question around the impact on local business. With H&M located out in Bayshore, at first glance it doesn’t seem to pose direct competition for local downtown boutiques. Yet as local businesses seek to expand, they might see themselves facing more competition from larger stores. Local boutiques have proven resilient, however, and their loyal clientele isn’t likely to stray too far from those shops.

Bayshore’s General Manager seemed pleased as punch with the announcement. ”We are extremely excited that H&M has selected Bayshore Shopping Centre as its first location in Ottawa,” said Denis Pelletier, GM. “Welcoming one of the world’s most sought-after clothing retailers is proof that Ottawa is on the fashion map. With H&M’s opening in the fall, as well as the addition of a number of other exciting, new retailers, Bayshore has cemented its position as the city’s fashion destination.”

If you’re into cheaper fashion, H&M will definitely be a draw. They’ll be getting new deliveries every single day, so “maybe you won’t be able to find something on Monday, but if you come back on Tuesday, there will definitely be something there.”As for the sought-after designer collaborations, H&M has yet to announce a collaboration this fall. Scarlett also informed Apt613 H&M will be hiring staff for their Ottawa location and can apply on their website, www.hm.com/ca.

Inspired by the empowered, confident women of Ottawa and abroad, store owner Amanda May Beaubien says that while the store was a long-time dream, the actual process began just this past summer. Starting her own designer label is the shining beacon to her five-year plan, and Beaubien says she has always been on the technical side of fashion.

“I’ve always been a sewer,” she said. “My mother sewed costumes for the Winnipeg Ballet. One day I would like to move into design, but for now, retail is the perfect way to learn the market and see what gaps there are to fill within the industry.”

Tired of the stereotypical childish prints that come attached to smaller bra sizes and bored by the beige and black varieties offered to the bustier ladies, Amanda May Lingerie is determined to not discriminate against the sizes deemed above and below average.  Offering lingerie pieces in cup sizes A-K and band widths from 28-38, the shop gives women the chance to pick a bra by the style, and then find their size on the rack.

The variety of sizes go hand-in-hand with the renowned brands tethered to each garment. Elle Macpherson, Panache and Fleur of England are just a few of the designer labels available at the store. But with the designer names come designer prices: bras average at $80-$100, underwear $20-$40 and silk pajamas coming in at $110-$400. These garments are clearly delicacies that go beyond daily wear.

What Amanda May Lingerie offers is unlike anything you will find in your average store. A must-stop destination on your next trip down Dalhousie, you will leave feeling elegant and just a tad more confident than you did when you walked in the door.

Amanda May Lingerie is located at 203 Dalhousie Street. Visit their website for details on opening hours.

We’re celebrating local business all month with our second annual Support Local Month. Last month’s Creative Mornings lecture with Katie and Regine from Victoire Boutique captured so much of our motivation for this project that we asked the team at Creative Morning if we could share the video here. Katie and Regine are amazing local business leaders and we have so much respect for what they do. If you’re interested in what it takes to succeed as a shop owner here in Ottawa, take a few minutes to let them explain. For more on Creative Mornings , visit www.creativemornings.com and find the Ottawa chapter.

Raw Sugar is celebrating a milestone of it’s own this weekend. It their fourth anniversary party. They have assembled a great list of DJs and will have a fun night of dancing, pints and fun. Things start at 9pm on Saturday and cover is 5 bucks.

We caught up with Nadia to quickly look back on four years in business.

Apartment613: Congratulations on your anniversary. What has changed most about your business over the past four years?
Nadia: Thanks! It feels like changes come daily, in the smallest ways. We’re constantly adapting to needs of the customers (gluten-free, vegan, homemade options, etc.). Events that take place are ever changing. There’s now a small vintage clothing section. Implementing new ideas is truly the fun part of business, for both the customer and myself!

Apartment613: What milestones are looking back on most fondly?
Nadia: I think perhaps too many to count! Many musical milestones. Again too many to recount, but shows like Snowblink or Nat Baldwin (of Dirty Projectors) remind me why I do this and how fortunate I am to host shows like this. The day Jack Layton attended Judy Rebick’s book launch. An honour to have met them both.

The day we were mentioned on CBC’s Q with Jian Ghomeshi! Stories of how people met their now partners here! Finding an amazing team of staff that make Raw Sugar what it is.

Apartment613: Do you have any advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs?
Nadia: In this particular genre of business: Have a plan. Believe in your idea. Don’t do it for the money. Make sure you’re ready for the personal and professional ride.

Apartment613: What should we expect from your party this weekend?
Nadia: Hopefully what every anniversary party has been so far, a celebration. It’s the one time of the year I can try to show my deep appreciation to everyone that has supported the cafe. I have met some of the most kind and inspiring people through the community that has been built at the cafe, and will forever be grateful for that.

The Elizabeth Fry Society of Ottawa is working to reunite a mother and her child after she gave birth in an Ottawa jail cell. The shocking story has been raising raising questions about how the birth happened behind bars and whether appropriate procedures were followed.

Shoppers in Ottawa can look forward to an expanded Rideau Centre, with clothing retailer H&M as a key tenant. The popular brand’s logo was present on artist’s renderings shown at the Ottawa Real Estate Forum this past Thursday.

A few local restaurants, including Pressed Cafe, Murray Street and Edgar, played host to TV crews from the Food Network Canada show “You Gotta Eat Here” this week. We can’t wait to see these local favourites featured on the small screen.

It was one year ago this week that Jamie Hubley took his own life. The Ottawa Citizen reflects on the events that followed and the resulting discussion of teen suicide and the safety of LGBT youth.

With more than 12,000 green products, among them eco-friendly housewares, cosmetics, toys and clothing, the store will contain the largest selection of environmentally responsible goods under one roof in North America.

Set to occupy part of the former Ikea building at the Pinecrest Shopping Centre in Nepean, the new store will be called terra20, and will be the first outlet in what the owners hope will become a national green retail chain.

The store will also offer an ecobar where customers can refill cleaning supplies into their own containers, thereby reducing packaging.

The grand opening of the 20,000-square-foot location (15,000 of which will be retail floor space and 5,000 warehouse space) is scheduled for September 15.

“If we are ready we will open a few days ahead of schedule,” says Pamela Tourigny, terra20’s community manager. “But not too much before that.

The brainchild of local entrepreneur Steve Kaminski, executive director of the Colonnade Group of Companies and a board member of the Ottawa Hospital Foundation, the idea for terra20 was sparked by a home building project.

“Steve was building a home a number of years ago and he was trying to incorporate sustainable materials,” recounts Tourigny. “He did a search of where he could get these materials but he found that there was no one-stop place to get them.”

This realization inspired Kaminski to come up with the idea of a department store that specialized in green merchandise.

Partnering with Bill Stewart, who has more than 20 years worth of experience in retail and is now the president of terra20, Kaminski was able to put in place his vision of founding an eco-friendly retailer.

An integral part of this vision is the participation of the store’s suppliers.

As part of its vendor agreements, terra20 requires each supplier to appear in the store either in person or virtually at least once a year in order to talk about their goods.

“Our intent is to have a few vendors in our store on a weekly or a bi-weekly basis,” says Tourigny. “We want them to interact with our customers (so they can) give their products a shot because they are great products.”

However, with suppliers across Canada, the United States and Europe, accommodations will need to be made for some of the presentations.

“It’s not very eco to have them flying from all over the place,” says Tourigny about suppliers who live far from Ottawa. The company is therefore looking at virtual options such as having presentations via Skype or video link when necessary.

“We are still working on that,” adds Tourigny.

While the Ottawa location will be the first terra20 store, the plan is to expand across the country. According to a media report, a second store is being planned for Toronto, with a possible launch next year.

When asked about future expansion plans, however, Tourigny says that nothing has been finalized.

Coffee, on the other hand, is a different story. And it’s there that the Charlie Bucket in me starts to peek out from behind my drab exterior, wide-eyed and astonished.

Last week, I got to tour the facilities at Bridgehead’s new roastery on Preston. The lack of oompa-loompah’s aside, I must admit that I felt a definite sense of wonder from the moment I entered the building. Located in what was once a stables for Bell Canada, the roastery looks something like a craft beer brewery. In the middle of its huge, open floor sits a massive roasting machine. All of Bridgehead’s coffee now moves through this one machine. If you drank a cup of Bridgehead coffee this week, there’s a fairly good chance that I was there when the beans were roasted. For me, this was like visiting the epicenter of my coffee addiction: inspiring and terrifying. The roaster sits like a mythical creature in the middle of the facility, at all times emitting a loud whirring noise, which can be a little difficult to talk over.

Luckily Ian Clark, Bridgehead’s Director of Coffee, was there to guide me through the process. He showed me the huge barrels where they keep the green, unroasted beans, labeled by type and overwhelmingly plentiful. Then he let me watch a batch being roasted, and explained a lot of technical things about coffee. If you ever wanted to know everything about coffee roasting, I’m told Bridgehead gives free tours of their facility on weekends. It’s a very complex process, it seems—one that requires careful control of temperatures and so forth. And it’s clear that quite a bit of the science of coffee happens long before a barista brews a cup.

But the brewing is a big part of it as well. The Bridgehead roastery is actually half roastery, half coffee house. It’s a place where you can see the nearly complete story of your cup of coffee unfold. As well as putting the roasting process on display, the facility sports another attraction for coffee geeks: multiple brewing methods. By my count, there were four specialty brewing methods to choose from. Ian Clark showed me the difference between two of them: the clever and the syphon.

Both methods are spectator sports, with the barista obsessively checking the temperature and weight and stirring the coffee. In the end, the results of both methods were vastly different. Ian Clark explained that they suggest different brewing methods for different strains of coffee. Coffee is like wine, it seems, and much attention should be paid to every step in the process from bean to cup. Coffee geeks could spend hours in a place like this, trying different brewing combinations with different beans.

The roastery also appeals to lovers of design. Tracey Clark, Managing Director of Bridgehead and one of the minds behind the roastery project, told me that the structural design and location of the facility was extremely important. When they were first offered the building in 2008, she tells me, the place was a bit of a mess. “At that time there was a back part that was sort of a warehouse, self-storage area, and it was packed to the rafters and there was a middle part that was full of old glass making equipment and a lot of porn on the walls,” she says. It was segmented, something they weren’t looking for, but when they brought in a structural engineer, they were told that it was originally open and the dividing walls could go. And so they did.

Open as anything, the room is mostly lit by a huge skylight in the middle of the building. “It was built before electricity,” Clark says, “so it was daylight that they relied upon.” This is a perfect example of one of the main themes of the design, the blending of the original structural design with a more “Bridgehead” aesthetic. “From an architectural point of view it would be called ‘transitional’ in the sense that it tries to highlight some of the old and yet with the new,” says Clark.

As well as the building itself, the location was also a big draw. Fairly central, the roastery is right across the street from Plant Recreation Centre on the edge of Chinatown. It would have been cheaper, and probably easier to put the roastery somewhere on the outskirts of town, but for Clark and the rest of the Bridgehead team, that didn’t feel right. “It was important that it be an urban, pedestrian oriented place,” says Clark. “What we wanted to do with roasting was to put it in a place where our values of openness and transparency would be visible.”

Clark also felt it was important to maintain Bridgehead as a member of and a contributor to Ottawa on a community level. “I want to allocate a certain number of days and parts of days throughout the year that could be given over to community events, where the space is either offered at a nominal rate or for free for various kinds of community events,” says Clark. At the back of the roastery is a space specifically set aside for events of this kind, complete with tables, a whiteboard, and Beau’s beer on tap. Oh, by the way, the roastery is licensed. Clark has plans for pop up galleries and cafes that could take over the back of the building.

Clark also told me that the wood paneling that lines the inside of the building contains a coded message courtesy of Architect Michael Kilpatrick. I’m told he has, in his playful way, inscribed a message in Morse code. She was guarded about what it said, hinting that people would have to come out to the roastery to find out. As if we needed another reason to go.

All photos courtesy of Joelle Guédon. 

You’ve got a month to take in the art, but today you can take in tours, live events and vernissages at many venues from 1:30-5:00pm. The full listing of venues is online here.

This week on Apartment613 Live, I spoke with Caleb Abbott and Andrew O’Malley, two of the artists taking part in Chinatown Remixed. Here’s the audio from our conversation:

Just in time for the impending March break (and some pretty mild weather according to CBC’s Ian Black) Aaron Cayer, owner of Antique Skateboards, is opening a retail shop in Centretown. Antique has a history of leading some cool projects, including the “While you were on Facebook” video series (embedded above), where Aaron created a community-drive skateboard video that celebrated the sport in Ottawa. He’s hoping to think a bit differently about the business, building something that reflects the community that Antique has developed. “I want to get people motivated to help out and work on more and bigger projects. I believe in people and know that if we work together we can bring about some change” said Aaron.

If the business is going to be a community, Aaron knows that the space needs to reflect that.

“The space is supposed to inviting; it is more than just somewhere to buy a t shirt. There is a social space at Antique. Somewhere where anyone can come join in on all the fun. A space to talk, banter, debate and discuss issues of any kind (although I expect skating to be a hot topic)”

The shop, located at 9 Florence Street, will be opening officially on March 11th, but Antique is throwing a party to celebrate this Saturday night. The evening will also be feature new artwork by Julian Garner and Joel Conroy from Five Cents and music by Dee Jay Frame and Sweetcheeks & Hobo. There is also an after party at Ritual Nightclub, for those who don’t work on Sunday morning.

Everything in the shop will be 15% off when they open for business on Sunday and you can get an Ottawa-designed Antique board for $40 with grip. Join the fun on the Facebook event page.

Squinting to see spring, but still too creeped out to have your cornea lasered? Ottawa has a few great independent eyeglass stores to frame up your peepers in style.

For the practical-minded, there’s Pflug Optical (1580 Merivale), an Ottawa staple for over 30 years. They offer classic shapes with small quirks (e.g. standard rectangle frame in vibrant green). Pflug is a great place for those having trouble picking out frames on their own. Excellent customer service and honest opinions are abundant at this shop.

If Elton John lived in Ottawa (imagine THAT?), he’d buy all his glasses from Optical Excellence (779 Bank). Exotic-takes on the cat-eye, intricate European designs: each frame is like piece of art, and priced as such. Ironically though, Optical Excellence offers great prices for refitting old frames with new lenses, so it all balances out.

Eyemaxx (237 Elgin) is also a great choice. It’s a clean, uncluttered store that still has oodles of options— from funky plastic to basic metallic. If for no other reason, you should check them out because they are the only store in Ottawa that carries super sexy Salt brand eyewear; a hot eyeglass company with moderately priced.

For those still looking for something different (or cheaper), there’s always the vintage route. Aunt Olive’s (209 Glmour) offers up the odd frame (average price $20), and you can sometimes get lucky at Young Jane’s (203 Dalhousie) and Ottawa mega-consigner Ragtime (43 Flora).

Did we miss your favourite eyeware store? Let us know in the comments!