Fashion designers ask city to help McCord Museum with expansion plans

A dozen leading fashion designers are asking the city of Montreal to find a solution that will allow the McCord Museum to go ahead with its expansion plans.

In May, Mayor Valérie Plante confirmed that a site where the museum had been planning to build its $150-million home would be turned into a park.

The future green space — currently a municipal parking lot next to the Place des Festivals, between Jeanne Mance St., de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Bleury St. and President Kennedy Ave. — will replace the Jardin Domtar, a privately owned park just west of it that is being destroyed to make way for a 36-storey condo-hotel tower.

The previous city administration had promised the site to the McCord Museum.

In an open letter submitted for publication to local media on Friday, the designers said they were “extremely disappointed to learn the museum’s expansion project is in jeopardy” and called on the city “to find a solution so the McCord Museum can take its rightful place in the heart of downtown Montreal.”

“The McCord Museum shines a spotlight on Montreal and its designers better than anyone. The Museum is a major asset for the city, and it’s imperative we move rapidly to develop a world class institution on par with the great fashion museum(s) of New York, Paris and London,” the letter says.

The signatories of the letter include Michel Desjardins, Philippe Dubuc, Denis Gagnon, Jean Claude Poitras, Michel Robichaud and Marie Saint Pierre.

Demolition of the Jardin Domtar began last month. The city has said a temporary park will open next year and that it will hold consultations on the new permanent park starting later this summer. Plante has promised to work with the museum to find another site for its future building.

The McCord, a social history museum that hosts 200,000 visitors each year, says it has run out of space at its current location in McGill University’s former student union building on Sherbrooke St. W. at Victoria St.

It announced five years ago it was merging with the Stewart Museum, a history museum on Île Ste Hélène, and recently joined forces with the Fashion Museum in Bonsecours Market in Old Montreal.