Parties and problems

As St-Viateur’s boosters get on the street for
a neighbourhood celebration, the street gets
sandwiched by festering headaches

WHY US, WHY NOW? 5555 de Gaspé residents
Guillaume Simoneau and Jennifer Hamilton

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

It’s a relatively small, short street, but for some reason St-Viateur is well loved—even when it has its problems. And these days, it has at least two, at either end of its Mile End heart.

On its western end, Parc Avenue is getting ripped up, its guts torn out and reworked to bring water to an estimated 140,000 nearby residents. It’ll be an ugly project, and a big, expensive one, estimated to last some 18 months. Construction began this week, and Parc merchants are already worrying about the effect it will have on their businesses, given the shambles of a job the city did when they tore up St-Laurent twice between 2006 and 2007.

Meanwhile, the Plateau borough’s elected officials—all of them members of the green-minded Projet Montréal—are hoping that the big dig includes a re-think of the avenue’s current make-up, especially regarding public transit. The long-anticipated Jean-Talon to downtown tramway system is still years away from completion, and there are no signs yet that its future is included in the current plan.

At the other end of the street, three blocks east of St-Laurent, one building is being emptied without the benefit of any long-term improvements. On Tuesday, July 6, residents of 5555 de Gaspé were told to get out post-haste by the city’s fire department when inspectors discovered the building was not up to code. According to some accounts, they were given a half-hour to vacate the premises, given a 72-hour hotel voucher and told they could collect their belongings later that week. Residents, including photographer Guillaume Simoneau, are flabbergasted. The converted warehouse’s residents include a large proportion of artists who live in their workspaces, and they are left scrambling to find accommodations that can match both the prized location and the relatively cheap price they were paying.

“We knew there were problems, like there are at any kind of atelier. But it’s not collapsing, there was nothing life-threatening,” says Simoneau, 32.

The fire department disagrees: they say the fire alarm system was defective, there was no water in the sprinklers, clutter was blocking the corridors and fire escapes were practically non-existent. Landlord Johnny Svetna had apparently been warned up to seven times but did nothing, according to media reports. But Simoneau thinks the city is simply using that as an excuse to grab and demolish the building as part of its 2008 plan to extend St-Viateur east to Henri-Julien. (Mile End borough councillor Alex Norris denies it as “completely untrue. That plan is overwhelmingly off the table.)

Jennifer Hamilton, a 29-year-old visual artist, says she has been frantically looking for a new place so she can get off her friend’s couch in St-Henri—two weeks after the July 1 moving day. And she isn’t getting any help or news from authorities. “There’s definitely been a lack of information from the city, the fire department and the landlord,” she says. “We only hear anything from the building’s maintenance people and from other tenants.”

The good news is, this weekend St-Viateur will be holding a street party. The first of three projected for the coming months, the Journée des bons voisins will, according to co-organizer Matt Vick of Car-Free Mile End, hopefully “start a conversation about people’s daily habits…. It’s about getting out in the street [and creating] more links in the community.”

And how about that construction? Vick gasps. “I haven’t thought about that,” he says. “Really? It’s starting up here? Ah, another stress.”

The next street parties take place on Aug. 21 and Sept. 5.