Accessibility should trump terrace bylaw, bar argues
A Ville-Marie bar held a demonstration Monday evening to fight an urban planning bylaw that requires the bar to lower its terrace by about 10 inches.
The adjustment would make Bar Renard’s washrooms and the indoor part of the bar inaccessible to patrons in wheelchairs, owner Marc-Antoine Coulombe told the Montreal Gazette.
The bar, on Ste-Catherine St. E. near Beaudry St., has many customers with limited mobility, Coulombe said. While he said he understands lowering the terrace might make it more accessible from the street, it would also mean some patrons sitting outside on the terrace could have trouble going indoors to the washrooms.
“If only one person needs to go to the bathroom, they should be able to,” Coulombe said.
The Ville-Marie bylaw calls for no more than two inches, or 50 millimetres, of space between the ground and the terrace. Bar Renard’s terrace, which has a wheelchair ramp, currently sits about one foot off the ground. The bar itself rests at the same level.
But the city of Montreal has other qualms with Bar Renard — the accessibility ramp is too steep for universal accessibility standards, according to city spokesperson Marc-André Gosselin.
“All the other terraced cafés in the Village have access ramps with compliant slope,” Gosselin told the Montreal Gazette in a statement.
An inspector visited Bar Renard recently and told the bar’s management they had until July 6 to lower the terrace. Following the visit, Coulombe reached out to the Regroupement des activistes pour l’inclusion au Québec, an accessibility activist group. RAPLIQ collaborated with Bar Renard to create a petition, which had 2,000 supporters on Saturday, according to the petition website.
RAPLIQ and Bar Renard also sent a letter to Alain Dufort, the borough’s director, asking him to put a moratorium on the bylaw, at least for the summer, said Linda Gauthier, the president of RAPLIQ. While Dufort agreed to the temporary exemption, Gauthier said the story will repeat itself next year.
“The owners want to stand their ground and want to promote universal accessibility before the requirements of urban planning,” she said.
Coulombe said he knew he was breaking the rules when he built the terrace. This is the first summer he has owned Bar Renard, and the initial plans he sent to the city for the new terrace were identical to the last owner’s design. While they were building the deck, however, Coulombe said he realized the only way it would be accessible to all was if the deck was built higher than regulation standards.
The original plan submitted to the city included a ramp leading from the terrace to the inside of the bar, Gosselin said, and complied with universal accessibility standards.
The bar’s management received a notice from the city during the week of June 19 saying the terrace must be destroyed or conform to the original plan submitted to the city, according to Charles-Étienne Bégin, the bar’s general manager. Bégin said the purpose of Monday’s 5 à 7 demonstration was to open a discussion on accessibility and the current bylaws that affect it.
“The rules are contradictory,” Coulombe said, referring to a clause in the bylaw that focuses on the importance of accessibility.
“We’re basically fighting to have the right to build our terrace at the same height as the business,” Coulombe said. “Access to the business should be unlimited.”