by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Perhaps no other block presents as familiar a local portrait of stubborn downtown decay as the old Seville Theatre and its adjacent abandoned and burnt-out buildings on the north side of Ste-Catherine W. from Chomedy to Lambert-Closse.

In better days, the block near the old Forum thrived with a repertory theatre, a barbershop, laundromat and restaurants. But in 1985 David Stein bought the Seville Theatre building and boarded it up. Some other buildings burnt and were never rebuilt. When the Forum closed, much of the commerce took off with it.

But the downtown block looked to have a saviour in 2001, when a big-money environmentalist started covertly buying it up. Through a numbered company, Seagram heir Stephen Bronfman and his Claridge Inc. acquired the lands one by one. He bought an old, defunct Texan restaurant from local developers Candarel. The neighbouring properties, owned by the Bahamas-based Carsten Rumph, were next. The final landowner raised his price dramatically at the last minute after learning that the bidder was cooking something big.

By the end of 2002, Stephen Bronfman’s Claridge Inc. had paid about $12.5-million for the north side of Ste-Catherine and the parking lot behind.

Bronfman—an avid environmentalist—then hired architect firm L’OEUF to plan an environmentally-friendly commercial and residential complex. OEUF specializes in the building of eco-friendly buildings. Architect Danny Pearl brainstormed with a series of experts on the eco-possibilities for the property, as detailed in a thick Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report.

The project promised the city’s most extensive collection of ecological bells and whistles: geothermal indoor gardens, roof gardens, indoor composting, wastewater treatment, natural ventilation, condos equipped with composting garborators, bamboo flooring, southern facing balconies that transform into winter solariums.

Environmentally-oriented chains such as Wholefoods and Patagonia were wooed, a restaurant, spa, a bookstore with lots of ecologically-oriented lit, a CD store, and other small retail shops were all pencilled. The Seville Project, officially titled the Projet Soleil, seemed well on its way.

But a year ago the project—which remains proudly atop the list of designs boasted on the OEUF’s Web site—was put “into hibernation,” to use description offered by the architects.

Some blame a stock market development that led to a decline in Bronfman’s personal wealth. Officially, the project was stalled because of lack of enviro-demand. Bronfman’s office would not comment on the project.

“The majority of the progressive green clients are either on the west coast or some parts of the northeast states,” says Pearl. “I can’t say Montreal is there yet. We have to work harder on education. There’s more awareness now, it just might not be happening at the speed we’d like.”

He also cites a lagging overall commercial demand. “Montreal has a commercial component that didn’t catch up the way its housing market caught up.”

OEUF’s thriving practice of designing impressive, eco-friendly homes continues to grow but the Seville Project’s stalling hurts. Says Pearl’s colleague Bernard Olivier, “We’re already doing a lot of the features on a smaller scale on some of our other projects, but the combination of all the things in one building was exciting.”