PLANS AND POLITICS
New proposal for Empress
A new Notre-Dame-de- Grâce citizens group, The Friends of the Empress, wants the city to help save the former Empress Theatre.
The crumbling building, perhaps better known as Cinema V, has been abandoned since a fire gutted the place in 1992.
The Friends of the Empress was short on specifics Wednesday, suggesting it was time to ask the people of N.D.G. what they wanted to do with the building on Sherbrooke St. W., just west of Girouard Ave.
“I think there’s a lot of community energy to do something with this building,” said Paul Scriver, one of the members of the group. “It’s a rotten tooth in a pretty nice mouth. Things are picking up on Sherbrooke St., and there’s a lot more interest in the community here. There are a lot more businesses opening up, yet the Empress Theatre is still sitting here. So I think if there’s anytime, it’s got to be now. (Otherwise), it’s demolition by neglect.”
In fact, over the past 15 years, numerous projects have been proposed for the decrepit building, which is owned by the city of Montreal. The most recent is the Cinéma NDG project, submitted by the non-profit group The Empress Theatre Foundation. While the name of the building has changed from Cinéma NDG to the Empress Theatre, as it was originally called, the plan is still very much alive, according to both borough Mayor Russell Copeman and the head of the project.
The plan is to have at least five cinema rooms, a multi-use room that could be rented by the community and a restaurant.
“I think we’re closer than we ever have been,” said Copeman, who is mayor of Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. “I think the next three months are critical … if we can’t nail down this option that’s on the table, then it will be very difficult to do so … and we’re running out of options. … The building is not in great shape and I am not prepared as borough mayor to invest more public dollars into this building unless there’s a viable financial framework. The building is deteriorating. There’s no doubt about it. I think we’ve got probably one more winter left and after that the structural integrity of the building gets to a point where if something doesn’t get done, something dramatic will have to happen.”
But the new group is proposing a transitional revamp called the Empress Porch, creating an outdoor sidewalk-level space in front of the building and then an inside foyer to welcome the public.
“It’s a temporary thing before they can get a consensus from the community and I think it’s great,” said Sue Montgomery, who is running for mayor of Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce under the Projet Montréal banner.
“I think right now it’s an eyesore on this part of Sherbrooke and if I win, I will make this a priority because we need something like this in our community.”
Kim Fuller, president of The Empress Theatre Foundation, said Wednesday’s announcement by The Friends of the Empress was an attempt to play politics, to cause problems for a project supported by Copeman.
“It’s unfortunate that now there’s another group that is using the project as a political playcard,” Fuller said. “It’s really disappointing, because we should all be pulling in the same direction, not dividing the community and certainly not wasting everyone’s time asking what we should do with the building. The city had an agreement with the Cinéma NDG and the Empress Theatre Foundation to bring it back to life, to give the building purpose once again and that’s what we’ve been working on. … It’s political horseplay.”
Elaine Ethier, one of the key people who initiated the Cinéma NDG project, left the group recently to run for city council in N.D.G., as part of Copeman’s team. Both Ethier and Copeman belong to Équipe Denis Coderre.