Destination
Cabot Square

>>Big plans are afoot to revitalize
the small and neglected park

MAKEOVER IN THE WORKS: Cabot Square

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

You’re walking east from Westmount along the north side of Ste-Catherine. You hit the Alexis Nihon, and stop at the open-air market to buy a mango from the fruit vendor next to the 90 bus stop. You keep going east, and at Atwater, you sit on a bench under a tree and wonder when the outdoor hockey rink will open for the winter. You wipe the mango juice off your chin and contemplate the Stanley Cups hoisted at that very spot, centre ice of the old Forum. Across the street, on the south side of Ste-Catherine, the buses descend into sunken embarkation berths and disgorge young and old residents of all colours and creeds, happily making their way to the mixed condo and senior residents in the former Montreal Children’s Hospital building. Still further east, towards Fort, soaring towers and busy boutiques add bustle and vigour to a once dour stretch of prime downtown real estate. All this, and barely a homeless person in sight.

It’s fantasy, of course. The intersection of Ste-Catherine and Atwater isn’t an open-air market, the Pepsi Forum still dwarfs street life, a half dozen bus lines still loop around the drunks at Cabot Square and the husk of crumbling facades still suck the life out of the street to the east. But it’s a “what if” vision, an amalgam of ideas unveiled Monday, March 31 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where the city is hosting a charrette—a meeting of planners, designers and architects all working on the same problem—to fix Cabot Square. Three teams presented first drafts of ideas that ranged from the attractive to the bizarre, centred around one central theme: how to revitalize a neighbourhood close to life-support.

Best of all

The charrette isn’t supposed to present a clear winner whose project will be implemented in its entirety, says Marie-Sophie Couture of Converscité, a non-profit urban development agency, and one of the charrette’s organizers. Rather, the ideas presented on Monday will be put on display next Wednesday, April 9, at the Pepsi Forum, where the public can examine and comment on them. The designers will then have another 10 days to revise their projects before the best aspects of all of them are incorporated into a single vision by the Table de concertation du centre-ville ouest, an associative body of 30 organizations and citizens in western downtown. Then they’ll be sent to the Ville-Marie borough for more consultation and eventual implementation.

The general idea, according to Daniel Pearl, the charrette’s director, is to capitalize on “the enormous opportunity for the community to stand up and ask for a special planning program,” one that includes people at the community level rather than just addressing the need for more economic development. That means bringing people in, and getting them to stay.

“It’s very tough to have the presence of a community when there are no eyes on the square,” he says. “Our study shows that the historical parts, like Shaughnessy Village (the residential neighbourhood between Guy, Atwater, Sherbrooke and the Ville-Marie autoroute) has a bit of everybody, but without an assembly point.”

A frequent target on Monday was the Pepsi Forum, which seems generally unloved, and widely regarded as a failure economically—something that irked André Jude, a Table de concertation member, who pointed out a number of shortcomings with not including the building in future plans, including a serious loss of tax revenues for the city and existing legal arrangement.

Without any concrete plans, it’s impossible to project the number of new residents who may move into an area around a reconstituted Cabot Square. But everyone contacted by the Mirror says they want a healthy mix of young families, students and old folks. What they hope for ultimately is deep roots.

“We’re looking for planning ideas that make sense to help revive the area,” says Phyllis Lambert, one of the jury members. Today, Cabot Square “resembles a classic American city, a doughnut, where the centre has fallen out.”

Homeless who?

The area has indeed fallen on hard times, especially since the Montreal Canadiens moved homes further east. Despite its interesting architecture and historic credentials, Cabot Square has languished, used almost exclusively by homeless people and the occasional community event such as aboriginal cultural festivals. The proposed new towers, parks, public art and underground parking won’t be of much use to them—which no one brought up last Monday.

One Square resident that does care for them is the Evangel Pentecostal Church, on Lambert Closse. Brian Berry, the executive director of Heart Action Montreal, a homeless reintegration outreach program and the church’s building manager, says, “I really don’t know what’s going to happen to these people. But we’ll continue to serve them for as long as possible.”