Followup

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At the end of March, the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership published a call to the interested public, to attend another kind of spectacle, a four-day real-estate fair called Montréal of the Future, held in the main atrium space of the Centre CDP Capital, more popularly known as the Caisse des Dépôts headquarters fronting on the new Place Riopelle. According to the impression left by the press release, the central theatre and arts district is underbuilt: there seems to be a potential of 1.3 million square feet of buildable area. The documentation put it this way, “The Quartier des Spectacles is an extraordinary opportunity for real estate decision makers to work together and invest in Montréal’s creative heart”. The proposals – architectural and urban models, posters, projections, audio-visual displays, and drawings and photographs - included two modest proposals for artists’ live-in studios, but much more significant in proportion were projects for office and conduminum use. The marketing strategy finally threw off its sheep’s clothing. The vacant lots used for festivals are to be prized as glowing red-hot commodities, up for grabs. A scenario of artificially stimulated, absurdly soaring rent and hyper-building appears to be underway, along with an unwanted de-stabilizing of many of the more fragile and vulnerable of the creative residents of this pivotal place.​

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Urbanism versus Branding
for Montréal’s Quartier des Spectacles