City offers three potential new sites

After announcing that the site where the McCord Museum planned to build its $150-million home would instead be turned into a park, the city of Montreal has proposed three other potential locations.

Each site fulfils the museum’s criteria, the city said in a statement released Tuesday, including that the building be downtown, near the Quartier des Spectacles and easily accessible by public transit.

“The ball is now in the museum’s court to analyze these options,” the statement reads.

President and CEO of the museum, Suzanne Sauvage, said the McCord is considering two of the three choices, but studies to find out which site is best could cost as much as $250,000 each.

“It’s a nice effort that the city made, but our favourite site was still the EugèneLapierre site,” Sauvage said, referring to a location that the Coderre administration had initially promised for the new McCord museum.

That site is a municipal parking lot next to the Place des Festivals, between Jeanne Mance St., de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Bleury St. and President-Kennedy Ave.

In May, Mayor Valérie Plante confirmed the site would become a green space to replace the Jardin Domtar, a privately owned park just west of it that is being destroyed to make way for a 36-storey condohotel tower.

The McCord is a social history museum that welcomes 200,000 visitors annually. The current location, on Sherbrooke St. across from McGill University, is bursting at the seams. Only one per cent of the collection is on display, and storage is at full capacity, with the museum now refusing artifact donations. Sauvage said the museum also needs more space for educational activities.