T here is a tradition among die-hard fans of the computer game Sim City to put their city hall on an isolated island away from the crime, noise, traffic, and other problems that plague their virtual cities. This time, it's for real. Ottawa's former city hall is the only establishment on Green Island in the Rideau River. Instead of a single, massive building, government operations were spread out over a campus of smaller buildings, arcades, and other structures that give this project an open feel of community rather than the monolithic symbolism of granite columns that has been tried so many times in the past.
2003 - The city hall is sold to the Canadian federal government. It was no longer needed after Ottawa merged with ten other cities to form one giant city.
