Covering up the Main

A big outdoor ad raises questions
about public space and heritage

HISTORIC GIANT: St-Laurent and Sherbrooke

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Advertising on St-Laurent is nothing new. As one of the city’s oldest and most important commercial arteries, it is, in fact, required. But a great big sign at the corner of the Main and Sherbrooke, covering up much of an historic building, is seen as a troubling development for some.

It all began last March, when media provider company Time2Ad announced it would wrap renovation scaffolding on the building, at the south-east corner of the intersection, with a gigantic Perry Ellis ad. The two-storey ad was replaced later that spring with an ad for Solo Mobile and then, after a 57-day interruption due to foundation work on the building, with a L’Oréal ad. It’s scheduled to stay up until work on the building is completed in November.

To Jason C. McLean, one of the founders of the Infringement theatre festival and public space guerrilla activist, Time2Ad’s claim that they’ll be taken down once work is finished rings false. He thinks that unless immediate action is taken, it will set a precedent for other advertisers who want their ads to dominate the commons. His group has already put out an online petition and set up a Facebook group, and is calling on concerned citizens to put pressure on their elected officials and Parks Canada, which designated St-Laurent boulevard a site of national historic interest in October 2002.

“Even if it is covering up construction work, it’s still bad, because basically it’s taking a historic building and turning it into advertising space,” he says. “In New York City, we see giant billboards covering up buildings and scaffolding that’s stayed up for 10 years. We see it in Toronto and other cities, but we haven’t seen this kind of intrusive advertising, and what’s more, on a historic site like the Main. It shows that our culture is for sale, and it will continue to be so in perpetuity if we do nothing.”

But Time2Ad’s president, Matthew Alzubi, says the unique advertising is actually helping the Main retain its historic flavour. He says a portion of the proceeds from the advertising—he wouldn’t say how much—is going to the landlord to help pay for renovations. “We don’t call it a billboard,” he says. “It’s really art, integrated with advertising.” He says he was first inspired to use a light fabric to cover a scaffold on a trip to Rome, where he saw similar designs covering restoration work on the Eternal City’s historic buildings. Future projects will, he says, actually reproduce the façade of the building on the fabric.

Dinu Bumbaru, of Heritage Montreal, is well aware of Time2Ad’s project—“Our office is right next to it,” he says—and while he doesn’t condemn the plan out of hand, he does seem perplexed by it. “We’re checking with the [provincial] Ministry of Culture to see if it’s within the protected radius of the [Opus Hotel, on the intersection’s south-west corner] and the Notman House [on Clark and Sherbrooke]. Advertising is part of the boulevard’s vocabulary. It has a history of advertising and signage. But this looks more like a roadside billboard.” He points out that the same company had a similar project on the Bay downtown, but in a much more subtle manner.

“Sometimes it’s better to have a sign, it can be fun,” he says. “But in this case, I wonder if someone requested a permit for this.”

The downtown borough’s spokesman Jacques-Alain Lavallée says the sign is perfectly legal, thanks to a new bylaw permitting large-scale advertising on scaffolding that was passed this summer. He insists, however, that once the renovations are finished, the advertising will come down.