A New Look For Old Montreal Part 1

By Emily Saladino

 

Filled with traffic and camera-toting tourists, until recently the 350-year-old streets of Old Montreal resembled a Canadian Times Square. Trendsetting locals bypassed the district, opting instead to spend time in other neighbourhoods, dancing in the nightclubs of Plateau Mont-Royal or sipping craft beers at microbreweries in St Henri and Griffintown.

 

But changes are afoot along Old Montreal’s cobblestoned streets. City-funded urban development projects are installing a pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, and a real estate boom is enabling a young, creative class of artists and entrepreneurs to open hip boutiques and restaurants. Suddenly, the city’s oldest neighbourhood is all anyone can talk about. 

 

“I call it ‘Nouveau Vieux Montreal’, or ‘New Old Montreal’,” said Mario Lafrance over coffee and croque monsieurs (grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches) last October. An earnest man in a plaid sport coat and Kissinger-chic eyewear, Lafrance leads the Société de développement commercial du Vieux Montréal (SDC), Old Montreal’s nine-year-old economic development organization. Since 1993, he said, the number of people living in Old Montreal has grown from 100 to 6,000. Nearly 40,000 people work in the district, Lafrance said, manning the shops and restaurants of the SDC’s 2,000-member local business alliance.

It is not the first time Old Montreal has been a community hub. Montreal’s founding father Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, installed Montreal’s first road, Old Montreal’s central Rue Saint Paul Ouest, in 1692. The street provided easy access to the St Lawrence River, and throughout the 18th Century prominent denizens like de Chomedy lived and worked there, building mercantile outposts and grand private residences near the port. Now, after almost three centuries of expansion, real estate speculation and tourist infestation, Rue Saint Paul Ouest has re-emerged at the centre of Old Montreal’s 21st-century revival.

One of the galvanising forces of Old Montreal’s revitalisation has been the development of an adjacent professional district called Cité du Multimédia. Over the past 20 years, Cité du Multimédia has grown into a media mecca, housing technology, marketing and design companies like creative agency Sid Lee and design consultancy Nurun. The neighbourhood’s youthful work force of writers, filmmakers and designers produce a stunning 70% of the world’s animation projects.

 

 

These new media professionals need restaurants to eat in and bars in which to rest their weary ankle boots. By the mid-2000s, they started trickling onto Old Montreal’s centrally located Rue Saint Paul Ouest. Now, they chatter over brownies and lattes at popular café Olive + Gourmondo, or meet for 5-à-7 (happy hour) cocktails at the coolly industrial Philémon Bar up the road.