From Red Light to Quartier des spectacles

AG-MD: When you did your research, what did you discover about the consultation process in terms of the transformation of this area? Were there stakeholders who were for or against the demolition and the new project? How did this process unfold?

AM: All I found in the City of Montreal’s Archives about the demolition of the old building was a resolution passed in 2006 at the City Council to expropriate (with compensation) the tenants of the building of which Studio XXX was a part. There was apparently no publication consultation on the demolition.

However, since the initial project of the 2-22 proposed the construction of a building exceeding the height limit allowed by the Urban Plan of the City of Montreal, there had to be a public consultation in order to get the necessary authorization before proceeding. It was at this time that the different interests of the people and organizations implicated could be identified. The various stakeholders were very divided.

In general, arts and culture organizations, especially those involved in the project and who would gain access to the property through the 2-22, were absolutely supportive of its development. It would provide security, access to a work and dissemination space almost impossible to find otherwise. This is a real issue in the arts and culture community, there’s no denying it. Access to space is very difficult to find for artists and distributors, who have not been spared by the rent increases related to gentrification. So having a permanent venue in the middle of the Quartier des spectacles was very attractive for organizations like VOX. 

On the other hand, heritage and community organizations were less enthusiastic about the project. Heritage organizations were concerned that the SDA’s projects would not integrate well with the historical character of the neighbourhood, especially the sister project of the 2-22, the Quadrilatère Saint-Laurent [today known as Square St-Laurent]. This second component notably threatened to do away with Café Cléopâtre, but they resisted and refused to be expropriated. The case made its way to court.¹

Many community organizations opposed the project or voiced reservations – because there is important nuance to this: organizations recognized that there was some value in the project, but they also saw risks, primarily for neighbourhood residents. Several organizations, like Stella², wrote a brief to express their concerns.³

 Essentially, what they proposed was to be a key stakeholder in the project, to be local actors in the building project of the 2-22, to have a say, to participate in the development of the project, to be consulted. They extended a hand to the project developers, but it was not well received.

Stella had been on the Main for eight years and so knew the neighbourhood very well. What’s more, they had been among the many people and organizations who had to relocate due to poor building conditions. They recognized that it was a neighbourhood that needed care, love, money, and development, but not in the way proposed by the SDA, the company executing the 2-22 project. 

Another thing that I learned reading the brief from Stella was that during the time that they were located on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, they had a display window and organized exhibitions, mainly about sex work and the history of the Red Light district. 

This highlights an important question when we’re talking about cultural policy: what is defined as belonging to the cultural sector, and what kind of practices are given visibility? For example, material related to sex work, like the window exhibitions presented by Stella, would not so easily be found on the walls of the 2-22 because the “guardians of culture” have judged it immoral. This is evidenced by the bylaws of the building. They are not welcome in exhibition spaces, in spaces of cultural diffusion, because for some, these forms of expressions are taboo. But with the choice to avoid offence, we push them to the margins. It’s curious because historically, sex work and the arts have had an intimate relationship. 

What I found also such a shame about this whole process is that by displacing the communities that live in a place, you really break the link between those communities and their sites of work, you disrupt their legacy by pushing them completely out of the center, out of touch with their history. This prevents the ongoing transmission of the place-based histories of these communities of practice. The conversations with SWAC made this very clear. It’s really hard to cultivate the collective memory of a place, of a community’s culture, when the connections are so fractured on so many levels by gentrification.

Another interesting thing about the brief produced by Stella is that they had compiled a list of negative impacts already observed in the area since its rezoning, even before the 2-22 project was presented to the public. During the period when the gentrification process was in its early stages, as the Quartier des spectacles was first being constructed, they did a field study which showed that not only were sex workers (SWers) already being displaced to other areas, but at the time there were increasing police inspections, constant police presence in the area, and an increasing number of fines being given to “undesirables”. This resulted, as with the demolition of Studio XXX, in job loss, the loss of SWers networks, and an erasure of their collective memory in the neighbourhood. This was a very live issue even before the 2-22 came along.