{"id":1098,"date":"2008-07-04T23:12:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-05T04:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/07\/04\/new-life-for-the-mile-end-garment-district\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:37:01","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:37:01","slug":"new-life-for-the-mile-end-garment-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/04\/new-life-for-the-mile-end-garment-district\/","title":{"rendered":"New life for the Mile End garment district"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this week’s edition of the Mirror I have an article outlining some of the issues surrounding the city’s planned redevelopment of the Mile End garment district. This summer, work will begin on refurbishing the portion of St. Viateur between St. Laurent and de Gasp\u00e9; a new sidewalk will also be built on the east side of de Gasp\u00e9, where one does not currently exist. Next year, St. Viateur will be extended east from Gasp\u00e9 to Henri-Julien, and after that a new footbridge will be built over the CPR tracks connecting the area to Rosemont metro. <\/p>\n

All in all, the city will be investing around $9 million in this project, with the goal of stimulating residential and commercial development on the area’s many vacant lots. It also hopes that the improvements will convince even more companies like French gaming giant Ubisoft, which maintains a large production studio at St. Viateur and St. Laurent, to move into the area and replace its fast-declining textile industry. All of this sounds fine, except that attention must be paid to the impact of this new development on the neighbourhood’s dozens of businesses and hundreds of residents, not to mention one of the city’s largest concentrations of artists and arts-related enterprises. <\/p>\n

In my article, I talk to city officials and some of the parties that will be affected by the redevelopment. Read more on Urbanphoto<\/a> or in this week’s Mirror.<\/p>\n

For decades, de Gasp\u00e9 was a buzzing hub of textile manufacturing. In recent years, however, the number of companies involved in the garment trade has declined, according to Mayor G\u00e9rald Tremblay, by more than 26 per cent, and the number of factory jobs in the area has dropped by more than 47 per cent. Change has been in the air since the mid-1990s, when the French gaming giant Ubisoft moved its studios into an old industrial building at the corner of St. Viateur and St. Laurent, bringing new life to a district that relied on an increasingly moribund industry.<\/p>\n

The creative nature of the area goes well beyond Ubisoft, however. After being forced out of cheap downtown lofts by development, dozens of artists sought refuge in the garment district. In just six or seven years, the number of artists, musicians and arts-and-design-related enterprises in the area has risen from virtually zero to nearly 200. In Fashion Plaza, one of the hulking industrial buildings on de Gasp\u00e9, about a quarter of its tenants are artists. (…)<\/p>\n

For the artists who work in the area, displacement is a constant worry. Many found themselves in Mile End after being evicted from downtown lofts that were the target of ill-fated development proposals, such SLEB (Saint-Laurent-en-bas, at the corner of Ontario and St. Laurent intersection), a luxury loft project that went bankrupt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s as much risk of that happening here,\u201d says Mathieu Beaus\u00e9jour, coordinator for the Centre d\u2019art et de diffusion Clark, a non-profit artists\u2019 organization on de Gasp\u00e9. \u201cIt\u2019s still mostly manufacturers around here and even when they leave, these buildings are too big to be converted into condos. But we are still concerned about some of the changes that could occur. Gentrification is already underway\u2014artists and bohemians are here and that\u2019s the first sign of it. It\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. When a neighbourhood gentrifies, it also diversifies. It\u2019s only when it becomes perverted, like on Mount Royal, where you can\u2019t get a sandwich for less than $15, that it\u2019s a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beaus\u00e9jour says that city officials\u2014including the mayor, who visited artists during the Atelier Portes Ouvertes event in May and on another occasion more recently\u2014appear sensitive to the area\u2019s \u201cartistic and cultural ecosystem.\u201d He wonders, though, whether a more active approach is necessary. He points to Paris, which bought buildings along the once-derelict Canal Saint-Martin and turned them into subsidized space for artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great opportunity to recognize that this is a district with artistic potential,\u201d says Beaus\u00e9jour. \u201cWe want to stay here. We don\u2019t want to end up on Chabanel.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week’s edition of the Mirror I have an article outlining some of the issues surrounding the city’s planned redevelopment of the Mile End garment district. This summer, work will begin on refurbishing the portion of St. Viateur between St. Laurent and de Gasp\u00e9; a new sidewalk will also be built on the eastContinue reading “New life for the Mile End garment district”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7839,7840,7842],"tags":[2692,2695,8,2693,9,729,2691,2460,346,38,536,704,5,2694,1080,302],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neighbourhoods","category-politics","category-urban-design","tag-canal-saint-martin","tag-centre-dart","tag-city-hall","tag-coordinator","tag-development","tag-gerald-tremblay","tag-in-fashion-plaza","tag-mathieu-beausejour","tag-mayor","tag-mile-end","tag-ontario","tag-paris","tag-planning","tag-textile-manufacturing","tag-ubisoft","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNew life for the Mile End garment district - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/04\/new-life-for-the-mile-end-garment-district\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New life for the Mile End garment district - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In this week’s edition of the Mirror I have an article outlining some of the issues surrounding the city’s planned redevelopment of the Mile End garment district. 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