Can heritage status protect imperilled Imperial Theatre?
News that Hydro- Québec has cut off the power at the Imperial Theatre for unpaid bills just a month before the Festival des films du monde (FFM) has heritage advocates worried about the fate of the Bleury St. landmark.
“It’s a disturbing prospect because what’s going to happen to a big old theatre these days?” said Dane Lanken, author of the 1993 book, Montreal Movie Palaces, a seminal work on silver-screen venues.
One of the last surviving grand downtown theatres, the Imperial, which serves as the FFM’s headquarters, was lovingly restored from 2000-04, thanks to $6 million in subsidies from three levels of government.
Viacom, the parent company of Famous Players, donated the building to the film festival in 1995. At that time, the non-profit Centre Cinéma Imperial was set up to manage and operate the building.
But the FFM, founded in 1977 by Serge Losique, has seemed increasingly on the brink of collapse. Last year’s festival was marked by the lack of funding by government agencies, employees resigning en masse for not getting paid and the Cineplex Odeon Forum rescinding permission to screen films.
Now the theatre’s future — which seemed relatively secure a dozen years ago — is looking decidedly shaky.
“I thought that was a good solution when things were going well for him and for the festival, but I’m not surprised to hear that things have fallen apart,” Lanken said.
“You can hear my concern. I don’t know what the solution is,” added Lanken, who was a film critic at the Gazette in the 1970s, when many of Montreal’s heritage theatres were being demolished or divided into cineplexes.
Designed by Philadelphia architect Albert Westover, the Imperial was built in 1913 as a vaudeville theatre, billed as “The People’s Pleasure Palace at Popular Prices,” according to Montreal Movie Palaces. Its architectural features include an elegant terracotta facade and large, handsomely decorated hall, which originally seated 2,000.
Reached by the Gazette’s T’Cha Dunlevy, Losique said the FFM is a tenant in the theatre.
If the theatre’s bills don’t get paid, he suggested the festival could move somewhere else.
He emphasized that the FFM and the Imperial are two separate entities, but confirmed he is on the theatre’s board, which is controlled by the Losique family.
While the theatre was donated mortgage-free, the FFM later mortgaged it for $2 million and reportedly used it as part of the collateral against a $3.65 million loan in 2015.
Joanie Dumais, a spokesperson for Quebec Culture Minister Luc Fortin, said the theatre’s exterior and interior are protected as a provincial heritage site and cannot be altered without the minister’s permission.
However, provincial protection has not prevented other buildings from slowly rotting away.
For example, the iconic Art Deco ninth-floor restaurant in the former Eaton’s is believed to be slowly deteriorating after being shuttered in 1999.
In an email from Johannesburg, Heritage Montreal policy director Dinu Bumbaru called the theatre’s plight “very unfortunate and saddening news.”
He said the risk to the building is less serious in summer than it would be in winter, when pipes could freeze.
Bumbaru said if the theatre is closed, the minister should step in to ensure the property is protected from squatters or weather damage.
“We don’t want to see the Imperial go through the agony of the Seville, which the city cited as a heritage building in 1990 and then failed to monitor and guard against vandalism or such situations as the roof hatch being left open,” which destroyed its remarkable plasterwork.
The Seville, which did not have provincial heritage status, was finally demolished in 2010.