Glut and strip

Montreal’s flat real estate market may
have saved the lower Main, but Cleopatra
still isn’t feeling any love

PRETTY VACANT: Lower St-Laurent

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Did capitalistic excess spare the lower Main? Maybe so.

Christian Yaccarini’s Société de développement Angus had big plans to remake St-Laurent between René-Lévesque and de Maisonneuve that are, as of last week, dashed—or at least drastically scaled back. The project involved erecting an eight-storey, glass-fronted tower on the southeast corner of St-Laurent and Ste-Catherine (the 2-22 Ste-Catherine project), a 12-storey office tower on the west side of St-Laurent (the Quadrilatère St-Laurent) and another project next to St-Laurent metro. The 2-22 project will go ahead, though delayed until May and down to five storeys, the Quadrilatère will now be a five-storey brick building and the St-Laurent metro project is on hold.

The project was hugely controversial from the get-go, despite Angus’s reputation as a forward-thinking company interested in sustainable buildings and its solid backing from the City of Montreal. But the project was generally unloved, especially by the people who worked and played in the area. After public hearings attended by professors, burlesque dancers, heritage activists and others, the Office de consultation publique de Montréal urged the city to slow down the Quadrilatère expropriations and re-think how the architecture would meld with the surrounding neighbourhood. Johnny Zoumboulakis, Café Cleopatra’s owner, is currently fighting his own battle against expropriation in court, and Culture Montreal has joined the fight, hoping to reach some sort of compromise.

But the real nail in the coffin may have come from shaky financing. The recession hasn’t exactly hammered Montreal, but the downtown real estate market is flat, according to Newmark Knight Frank Devencore. The corporate real estate advisor and brokerage says in an Oct. 22, 2009 release that, “Vacancy rates in downtown Montréal increased to 7.4 per cent, up from just 4.9 per cent a year ago. Approximately 3.4 million square feet of office space is currently vacant.” They are currently the highest, NKF Devencore says, since 2006.

It’s a point not lost on Eric Paradis, who organizes the monthly Club Sin nights at Cleopatra. “If you look at the empty commercial spaces between the Eaton Centre and Papineau, you’ll see that there is not enough of a demand to warrant (new office towers) unless the tenants are heavily subsidized,” he says. “But rather than saying the financing is tough, [Yaccarini] is saying that Cleopatra is upsetting the process.” Yaccarini said essentially that last weekend at a breakfast engagement with the Montreal Board of Trade, where he blasted Montreal’s public consultation process and Cleopatra’s supporters for creating “paralysis.”

Cleopatra’s supporters say they aren’t against revitalization per se, but just want help in relocating the business in a city that is always stingy with its permits. Velma Candyass, a member of burlesque troupe the Dead Doll Dancers, who perform regularly at Cleopatra, says Cleopatra’s fans are simply using what legal recourses are available to prevent runaway development of a federally recognized heritage site. “The developers don’t seem to think that we’re allowed to take legal action too,” she says.

But she notes that long-term damage to the area has already been wreaked on a neighbourhood that had been showing signs of life in recent years. Much-needed small and medium-sized clubs like Katakombes, les Saints and Opera have been forced out and likely won’t come back, despite the shrinking project. “The venues were very active,” she says. “There was revitalization, but the city successfully ruined it. There were different types of crowds, a nice mix of nightlife. But now it’s looking pretty decrepit.”