Tag Archives: Montréal Theatres

A modest proposal, Commentary, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal on Film, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, Worth reconsidering

Snowdon Theatre Fire, The Lowest Point & Social Media

Still frame from Snapchat of the Snowdon Theatre Fire - posted to mtlurb
Still frame from Snapchat of the Snowdon Theatre Fire – posted to mtlurb

Generally speaking, I’m a fan of urban exploration.

However, there’s a few golden rules we should all keep in mind when it comes to exploring the secret and unseen parts of the city: don’t leave any trace behind, don’t hurt yourself, don’t inconvenience others, and above all else, don’t negatively impact the place you’re exploring.

Say, as an example, by starting a fire that may threaten a vintage theatre and the residents of the adjacent apartment complex.

But if you are so inclined to start a fire in an abandoned building, for the love of all that is good and holy, please share a video or photographs of your illegal deeds on social media, so you can be found and eventually prosecuted.

At this point you may be asking; “but who on Earth would be so foolish to do such a thing?”

The answer: teenagers. Boneheaded teenagers. And apparently some hotshot young videographers as well.

In an astounding coincidence, on the very same day that photographs, like the one above, emerged online of several teenagers apparently starting a fire on the second floor of the abandoned Snowdon Theatre, this video of several people galavanting through the Métro tunnels was posted to YouTube and widely distributed on local social media networks.

Montreal police are now both searching for the teens suspected of starting the fire and have opened an investigation into how the Métro tunnels (and trains) were accessed by the creators of ‘Lowest Point in Montreal’.

In the latter case, the film crew accessed one tunnel while the Métro was still in operation, and then proceeded to make their way into the rear conductor’s cabin of an operational train, locking the door when accosted by an STM employee. As La Presse notes, there’s a safety issue inasmuch as there’s a security issue. It was just last week that Daesh sympathizers detonated bombs in a Brussels Métro station; the film crew in the ‘Lowest Point’ video had access to Métro controls, the track, and service tunnels and the various equipment kept in those tunnels. My guess is they were probably down in the tunnels for more than hour, and evaded STM security throughout.

Unless of course these are off duty and out of uniform STM employees who happen to be urban exploration enthusiasts; that would be one of those ‘everything worked out better than expected’ conclusions I don’t think is terribly likely.

I’m torn, really. I feel creeping adulthood and my gut says “don’t go exploring Métro tunnels”, especially not when the trains are actually in operation. It’s immensely dangerous, not to mention inconvenient for thousands or tens of thousands of people who may be affected by a temporary line closure. I think the code ‘900-02’ announces a suspected infiltration of the tunnels; if either an STM employee or the system’s CCTV system suspects there’s someone in the tunnels, they have to call it in, close it down and investigate.

So while I find this video intriguing and interesting, I can’t in good conscience recommend others do the same. The risk is far too great.

That said, the STM could probably make some coin offering after-hours behind-the-scenes tours of the city’s transit infrastructure. I would pay good money to get a guided walking tour of the Orange Line, and am certain many others would too.

It’s remarkable to me that two different groups of people, in the same city and at essentially the same time, both recorded acts of trespassing and other illegal activities and then posted it to social media, seemingly oblivious the video or photo evidence could be used against them.

***

Kristian Gravenor has weighed-in on the Snowdon’s fire, but places the blame for the building’s slow demise ultimately on the city and borough government. In his opinion, neither have been proactive with regards to saving this building, and he suspects the borough will now announce it can’t be saved, and that as such it ought to be razed to fast-track new construction.

Gravenor insinuates that there’s “…a conscious or subconscious will to eradicate this beautiful Art Deco building and what it symbolically represents.”

I would like to hope he’s wrong, and that this is simply a matter of local government lacking in vision and hoping for ‘free market’ solutions to solve problems that clearly fall within the public domain.

But when you consider that the Snowdon is the latest in an unfortunately long list of landmark Montreal theatres abandoned to ignoble fates without even an iota of effort by municipal officials to save them, it makes you wonder. This isn’t a new problem, it dates back forty years to the destruction of the Capitol Theatre, arguably the grandest of them all. More recently, the Seville and York were pulled down (to build condos and a university pavilion, respectfully), while the Snowdon, Cartier and most importantly, the Empress, lie abandoned and in ruin (and there are maybe a dozen more scattered elsewhere about the city).

In a city known for its nightlife, live entertainment and general cultural engagement, why is it very nearly impossible to renovate and rehabilitate old theatres and make them useful elements of the community at large?

A modest proposal, History and Culture, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal Landmarks, Urban Redevelopment

Pedestrianizing Ste-Catherine Street: How to Make it Work

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Orange & Green denote the Métro lines that pass through the city centre, the red line indicates the possible route of a Ste-Catherine Street tram and the turquoise lines point out where the RÉSO would connect the two
Orange & Green denote the Métro lines that pass through the city centre, the red line denotes the possible route of a Ste-Catherine Street tram and the turquoise lines point out where the RÉSO would connect the two

It looks as though Mayor Coderre is at the very least interested in discussing the possibility of pedestrianizing Ste-Catherine Street in advance of the city’s 375th anniversary.

This is as a consequence of needing to dig up the street and replace a sewer built in 1889, which as you might imagine is failing and causing a kind of chain reaction all along Ste-Catherine Street that has resulted in potholes, cracks and even a massive sinkhole that swallowed up backhoe last April. It needs to be replaced, post-haste, no question about it.

Unfortunately, when it comes to fixing sewers and eliminating sinkholes, this is about as politically unsexy as it gets. No one appreciates it, regardless of how vital it actually is.

Ergo, the mayor floats the idea of redeveloping the street as a pedestrian mall as the ultimate end goal. People, idiotically, don’t like infrastructure repairs. They like birthday presents.

Smart politics. Getting cars of Ste-Catherine Street would certainly reduce wear and tear on the street, but the mayor knows there needs to be an added incentive to get the people on board.

I suppose the rationale goes ‘if it’s going to be shut down, dug up and re-built anyways, why not turn it into something truly unique for the city’s 375th anniversary?’ Besides which, we already know the idea is economically sound based off the seasonal pedestrian mall in the Gay Village. Concerns that removing cars from Ste-Catherine Street would damage local business is unfounded; if anything a pedestrian mall would likely encourage greater foot traffic and, in turn, more shoppers.

That said, as recently experienced on both Parc Avenue and The Main, prolonged unorganized roadwork that doesn’t seem to have any kind of lasting positive aesthetic or social effect has resulted in an unfortunate number of empty shops and boarded up windows.

With that in mind, if I could make three recommendations to the mayor to help guarantee the success of this project:

1. Make absolutely certain the street doesn’t need to be dug up again for at least fifty years.

If we’re talking about 375th anniversary projects, here’s the legacy you want to leave behind. Be the person who fixed our most important street, permanently. Don’t just build a new sewer, install a proper utility tunnel right next to it. As it is it seems utility pipes and cables are simply buried under a thin layer of asphalt, and those in turn lie on top of segments of steam tunnels and ancient sewers. From what I’ve seen and heard, it’s remarkably disorganized.

Instead of the status quo, run all the pipes and cables through a new utility tunnel that runs the entire length of the street. Further, it could provide a solution to the problem of what to do with all the old Métro cars we’ll soon no longer need – the wagons could be modified and linked together forming a tube which could be sunk into the street, and the various utilities run along inside.

If you’re going to dig up the city’s most prominent street, you may as well give people something fascinating to look at as a means to sustain foot-traffic. I think burying Métro cars would qualify.

Placing all the various utilities in one easily accessible tunnel means we wouldn’t have to dig up part of the street each and every time something needs to be repaired.

2. Remove cars and increase foot-traffic simultaneously by installing a tram.

Close the street to vehicular traffic from Atwater to the Jacques-Cartier Bridge and give people a way to quickly traverse this distance in both directions. Installing a tram is a no-brainer. If we want Ste-Catherine Street to experience a renaissance that brings it back to its former glories, the city needs to give people a good reason to use the street. A tram is exactly that reason because it not only turns the entire street into a kind of immense, self-contained shopping and entertainment complex but also serves to alleviate congestion on the two most congested segments of the Métro. Because it parallels the Métro as it runs through the city centre it will appeal to locals and tourists alike, and it further connects to the RÉSO at multiple points. All of this serves to improve public-transit and alleviate congestion throughout the central business district. A tram on Ste-Catherine Street would help to redistribute traffic patterns and provide myriad new ways of accessing the city.

Fundamentally we want to broadly enhance the walkability of our city because this increases the quality of life of the citizens. It is supremely beneficial for a large city such as our own to be as walkable as it currently is, inasmuch as it is supremely convenient to live in a city where just about everything is either within immediate walking distance. But ‘walking distance’ takes on a vastly different meaning when you live in proximity of public-transit, especially our Métro.

Rejecting this idea off the bat is unwise. You can’t remove an entire street from the urban traffic and transit plan without providing some kind of a replacement. If a tram were installed on Ste-Catherine Street I have no doubts it would pay for itself in but a few years.

3. Foster the development of sustainable independent businesses.

Sometimes walking down Ste-Catherine Street feels like you’re in an old road-runner cartoon seeing the same background repeated on a loop. There are too few independent businesses and too many chains, and when it comes to the chains, there’s a lot of repetition. Ste-Catherine Street is supposed to be our city’s major retail and entertainment street, but there are far fewer restaurants, lounges, venues, bars etc. than there were back in the street’s glory days. In essence, the street isn’t terribly unique or interesting anymore. It’s all the same garbage you’d find on any other commercial artery in this or any other Canadian city. There’s no allure.

It’s up to city hall to do something about this. Legislation needs to be passed that limits the proliferation of chain stores on the strip, and rent controls need to be put in place to help small businesses thrive. A pedestrianized Ste-Catherine Street would be an ideal location for a concentration of vendors and could help add to the market atmosphere of the street. Perhaps most importantly, the city should try to facilitate a revival of the ‘entertainment’ component of the strip outside the Quartier des Spectacles, such as by redeveloping the old Loews and Palace theatres (or the Forum for that matter) as for-profit performance venues.

I think we’d be wise to look at what made the street a success in the past to see if we can find solutions to help guarantee it’s future.

A modest proposal, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Let's make this an election issue, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, Social commentary, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Montréal’s Lost Attractions – Keep this in mind for the 375th!

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Our city has been built on birthday presents.

For Canada’s Centennial Anniversary we got a Métro system and 50 million tourists in six months, not to mention world attention and twenty+ years of urban renewal and densification projects. For the 350th anniversary of the founding of Ville-Marie, we got skyscrapers, new parks and a thoroughly rejuvenated harbour front. In less than six years we will celebrate not only the 375th anniversary of our city’s founding, but the nation’s sesquicentennial and the fiftieth anniversary of Expo as well. What a party! As you may well imagine, the City is looking for suggestions with regards to themes and ideas for the celebration. I can’t think of anything specific and all-encompassing yet (no kidding!), so I thought it might be an idea to explore some of our lost attractions to see if we can’t think of something worth saving now to be operational by 2017.

I’ve listed some examples in no particular order, ask yourself whether we’re better off without them.

1. The Montréal Aquarium – so we once had an aquarium located on Ile-Ste-Helene, a gift from Alcan to the City of Montréal for Expo 67. Today, part of the pavilion remains as part of La Ronde, though every time I pass by it seems painfully under-used. Opened in 1966, the aquarium featured local species of marine life in addition to penguins and a group of dolphins. The dolphins were trained and were featured in many live presentations, and could even access Lac des Dauphins (now best known as the launch site for the fireworks each Summer) through a specially built tunnel. The aquarium shut down for good in 1991 after a decade’s worth of bad publicity as a result of a labour strike which resulted in the deaths of some of the dolphins. When it was opened to the public in the mid-1960s it was a state of the art facility comparable to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

2. The Montreal Funicular – if you ever take the 80 going up Parc Avenue in the Winter take a look at the mountain between Pine and Rachel, you may notice an odd dark line working it’s way up the side. At first glance it may appear to be little more than a rockslide, but make no mistake, this is actually all that remains of the Mount Royal funicular railway, which over a hundred years ago provided the path of least resistance to the top of Mount Royal. A the top was a rickety wooden platform offering a tree-top perspective on the bustling metropolis below. It didn’t last too long, going up against Frederick Law Olmstead’s protestations in 1884 and deemed structurally unsound by 1920 when it was dismantled. While I’m not in favour of cutting up the side of the Mountain to build a new funicular, I wouldn’t mind seeing a return of the No. 11 tram line to speed people to the top of Mount Royal.

3. Le Pélican – this is a full-size replica of Le Pélican, a ship commanded by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, born in Ville-Marie in 1661. The Pélican was abandoned after being holed below the waterline during the Battle of the Hudson’s Bay during the War of the Grand Alliance in 1697 after successfully repelling an attack by a superior English naval force. In 1987 construction commenced in La Malbaie on a full-size replica of this famous ship, which was brought to Montréal and moored here as part of our 350th anniversary. I remember visiting the ship with my brother and parents back in `92 or `93, though it wouldn’t be long before the project failed and the replica was sold to some American theme park. It has since been severely damaged and isn’t being used. One of the big problems for the project was their inability to secure authentic artifacts (or even replicas) for the interior of the ship, and thus had little to offer guests in the ways of demonstrating what life would have been like on a 17th century French warship. I wonder if such a project could succeed today. Isn’t it odd that a seafaring city such as ours doesn’t have a maritime museum?

4. Eaton’s Ninth Floor – when I was a young lad my mother worked in the city, and I thought this to be terribly grand, worth every minute of the commute. Up high amongst the skyscrapers, in with the hustle and bustle, in beautifully designed testaments to human ingenuity and innovation. She told me of eating here, that is was very popular amongst the white-collar crowd. A restaurant designed to look like an ocean liner (which of course translated in my young mind as being fisherman-themed and offering a uniquely all-seafood menu), it would be much later before I saw this gem of Art Deco interior design. The space still exists, though it has been mothballed pending renovation work that never seems to get off the ground. It’s apparently beginning to show signs of decomposition, and has been on Héritage Montréal’s watchlist for some time. It makes me wonder why the city doesn’t step-in and try to successfully operate a full-service, for-profit restaurant. People ate there as long as it was open (more than sixty years) simply because the food was delicious and reasonably-priced, and the setting was jaw-droppingly beautiful. Today office workers munch on Tim Horton’s while looking at their computer screens. C’mon…

5. Corrid’art – a simple project that transformed Sherbrooke Street from Pie-IX to Atwater into a nine-kilometer long outdoor art gallery, featuring the works of some sixty major local artists. It was supposed to be the principle cultural component of the XXI Olympiad, but the entire project was scrapped (literally) at the last minute by Mayor Drapeau, who considered it obscene and ugly. It was up for about two days, and was designed to feature some 700 performances spread out along the route. Moreover, this project had an urban-planning component, wherein it’s design allowed a aesthetic link to be made between the Olympic Park and the Downtown for tourists unfamiliar with the city. Why isn’t this done every year during the temperate months for precisely the same reasons (to showcase local artists and ‘connect’ the Olympic Park with the city?)

6. The Last Vaudeville/Atmospheric Theatres (including The Rialto, The Empress, the Loew’s Palace and Imperial Theatres). Of these four once great theatres only the Rialto and Imperial remain somewhat operational, though neither offer the regularly scheduled programming of multi-purpose theatre spaces you may find elsewhere. The Empress is a perpetual ‘what-if’ and the Palace is now a high-end gym. For a city constantly kvetching about lack of venue space, I wonder again why our city refrains from purchasing these local landmarks to be used as for-profit venues with regularly scheduled programming largely featuring local talent? Imagine if the City took it a step further, using revenue collected from ticket and concession sales, rentals and affiliated businesses to finance the renovations of other theatres? The point is that declaring some building a heritage site is a largely worthless gesture unless you plan on using it for its intended purpose. Either way, if other city’s can save their antique theatres, so can we.

We might not be able to fully articulate why we need these kinds of attractions except to say that it’s ultimately good for business and good for tourism. For me it’s an issue of following through on investments and never abandoning a project that involved or involves tax-payer money.

We’re a unique city in that we can depend on a steady stream of tourists each year, but from time to time we need to ‘spend money to make money later’ – key sectors of the economy need to be stimulated occasionally by city-led redevelopment projects, and these projects have in the past led to some of our greatest achievements. Now might not be the best time to plan an Expo or another Olympics, but you should know we’re better equipped to handle events of that size today than we were when we had them initially. We have better infrastructure, two international airports, an excellent mass-transit system and more convention and hotel space than we know what to do with – this is ours to use to turn a profit for our city, for ourselves. And while we still need to plan large international events to stimulate development on a large scale, there are still plenty of things we can do on a much smaller scale to increase tourism and tourist revenue. And what better place to look for inspiration than our own history books?

A modest proposal, Arts & the City, History and Culture, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Montréal public art, Perspectives on the City, Scenes from the City, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

The Empress Theatre – A landmark in limbo

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The Empress Theatre, from across Sherbrooke Street West in Girouard Park, NDG - Fall 2008

The Empress Theatre is back in the hands of the Borough of Cote-des-Neiges/ Notre-Dame-de-Grace, and the City is calling on the public for suggestions on what to do with the 84 year-old theatre.

CTV Montreal reports that after a 12-year effort to develop the former theatre into a community cultural centre, the borough has decided to reclaim the building and the reigns as to the project’s direction. This Fall they’ll be hearing new and revised proposals for the site, which has been abandoned since an electrical fire gutted much of the interior back in 1992.

I’ve had the chance to correspond with several people involved with the revitalization project over the years, and have even had the chance to go inside and see the potential of this building. It’s unreal. It has that warm fuzzy feeling large empty buildings slowly being reclaimed by nature give off.

Unfortunately, I’ve also seen the damage, and there is a dearth of investment capital for theatre renovation these days, as one might imagine. Back last August renovation work was estimated at $11 million and the City was inclined to support some of the work, but the project otherwise had to finance itself.

This in turn leads me to one of the major sticking points of the project: how will it generate revenue? It would seem as though this is not just a sticking point for myself, but for the project as a whole. No one knows how to come up with the capital if not for government grants and private donations. What I found curious was that there didn’t seem to be a plan for use of the space as a performance venue. While it was hoped that the site would become a permanent home to a theatre company, there were no other plans to generate revenue through performance, which is exactly what this kind of a theatre was designed to do.

The Empress was built in 1927 as an Egyptian-styled ‘atmospheric theatre’ with a comparatively high seating capacity, featuring a balcony and boxes. The ornate interiors were designed by world-renowned theatre designer Emmanuel Briffa, who had also designed the interiors of a host of other Montreal theatres – almost none of which survive today. There isn’t much to salvage, and indeed any revitalization of this space, if it were to be done to resurrect the aesthetic of Briffa so as to do tribute to him, would necessitate additional costs to incorporate what remains of the original design into a cohesive reproduction of the original, something which may be possible thanks to the rather large qualities of media collected for just such a reconstruction. But more to the spirit of the theatre, the Empress was designed to be used with vaudeville in mind, and was thus inherently designed to be multi-functional, providing a wide spectrum of performance entertainment possibilities. It was well known in this respect.

Click here for an ultra high-resolution picture of the former Cinema V from back in 1982.

Today, the Empress is a hollow shell of its former self. It has been abandoned since the fire in 1992 and is slowly being eroded by time and the elements. If nothing is done, it will go the way of the Seville and York Theatres. The City has been described as having seized the Empress from the non-profit Empress Cultural Centre which up until recently was in-charge of finding a developer interested in revitalizing the dilapidated theatre.

Seize sounds overly dramatic, given that no one has the capital to redevelop the theatre, ownership of a semi-abandoned too-dangerous-for-admittance building seems tenuous for all parties concerned. It’s a miracle the building is at least structurally sound – for the moment.

The interior is dark, stark, and filled with all the goodies an urban explorer goes looking for. As you can imagine, the people in charge of the revitalization effort aren’t too pleased with the explorers, who inadvertently drive up insurance costs.

And so it is, back to the public for calls and considerations. What to do with an old theatre that could be saved and put to good use for the community by providing a much-needed performing arts venue, if only someone was prepared to put between 10 and 15 million dollars into an obstinately altruistic endeavour? What to do indeed!

It’s profoundly naive to think someone’s going to come up with this kind of capital if the project has no hope of generating revenue. This is a double-penalty to the initial investor, as there would remain the issue of financing the yearly operating costs of whatever cultural activities going on inside. None of this would be cheap.

Therefore, it seems profoundly irresponsible to me to go forward on this project without knowing exactly how, we as members of the community, intend to generate the capital necessary for completion. If the community can’t figure out how to pay for this project, then the city will turn around, condemn the building and raze it, partially or thoroughly, and allow a developer to do with the site as he or she sees fit. And if this happens, everybody loses, city and citizens together. The citizens will lose a vital cultural space located in the centre of the community, while the city loses the potential indirect economic benefits of having just such an institution in our backyard.

NDG lacks a proper performing arts venue, and Sherbrooke Street West lacks a cultural institution to anchor the street and serve as an intellectual and cultural focal point of the community. The Empress could be all these things, in addition to an economic generator if there was an organization in place whose goal it was to generate a ‘self-sustaining’ level of revenue through regularly scheduled performances and other entertainment activities. I can imagine a seat of community activity, all day, every day, right across from the jewel that is Girouard Park. Moving forward it is imperative that revenue-creation be taken into consideration as an element of the renovation/revitalization of the site.

But what about the community? We need something more than just a performance venue, we need a community cultural centre, which is another vital community component lacking from NDG. An architect was brought in to make a recommendation as to what to do with the space back in 2005. Among other things, he indicated there was enough space inside to have one or two stages, a gallery space, between two and three storefronts, offices, rehearsal and construction facilities in addition to a dance studio and rooftop terrace. It was ambitious to say the least, but it’s still feasible. And the bigger the redevelopment, the greater the possibilities for potential revenue creation. To handicap the project prematurely by not seeking a thorough renovation and maximization of the space inside would be regrettable, as this may only prolong the demise rather than stimulate new growth.

***

One final point: one of the greatest concerns of the people I spoke with, various local residents and members of the ECC, was that the city would repossess the building and sell it to an unscrupulous real estate developer who in turn would gut the interior and resort to banal façadism, providing a limited number of excessively expensive ‘theatre-themed’ condo units within. I thought the nightmare to be a bit over the top, but I suppose that danger isn’t completely irrational. Still, the Borough hasn’t yet made a call, and they in all sincerity think another public pitch for tenders may present new investors and opportunities.

Now consider this: there’s a parking lot adjacent to the Empress, roughly half the area of the theatre. The other half of the adjacent lot features a nondescript two floor building with restaurants and small shops.

A condominium project on this theatre-adjacent site, possibly a condo tower with a multi-floor underground parking lot and a commercial rental-property base, may provide the initial investment capital for the Empress’ rehabilitation. I can’t imagine a more solid investment than one in Montreal’s as-yet un-satiated condo market, especially if this particular condo project would a) be in a neighbourhood where condos are still a rarity, b) have a commanding view of Girouard Park, the Oratory, the Mountain, the City (and just about everything else!) and c) be adjacent to a newly revitalized performing arts venue and community cultural centre. The Seville sold out in a half hour, do you think we could beat that record? I can imagine the owner of the adjacent building and parking lot could be motivated to sell or invest, especially if the resulting commercial base offered his tenants more modern and efficient facilities. At least three revenue streams could be generated from such a development, and this in turn could provide the capital necessary to execute the renovations of the Empress and provide start-up funds for the performing arts venue and community cultural centre. These costs could be incorporated into the cost and value of the condominium units. I can imagine once the theatre is financially self-sustaining, they may be able to pay off this investment back to the condo developers.

In any event I digress, that’s just one unorthodox proposal. It should be an interesting few months and I’ll definitely be following this story.