A NEW MISSION FOR THE VENERABLE RODIER BUILDING
Ship-shaped structure sails into the future as an art/technology/commerce incubator
Whenever a great city building, long feared lost to “progress,” is saved from the wrecking ball, it is cause for celebration. When said building is not only saved but rescued for a new purpose, especially one that touches on the convergence of art, technology and commerce, with the express goal of creating something to benefit the community at large, celebration seems almost inadequate.
Driving east on Notre-Dame across Peel toward University, with overpasses, highway entrances, train tracks on the ever-encroaching horizon, you can see a triangular building that has been there for 142 years. It has always struck me as a great ship nosed toward the west, ready to plow through the waters of Griffintown headed who knows where.
Or maybe it’s just anchored there, waiting for its next expedition — a Flatiron-style, four-storey affair similar to many in New York, but unique on the Montreal skyline.
In my childhood, it was known as Baron Sports. Before the age of big-box outlets, this was your allin-one outdoors and nature store that carried everything from tents and sleeping bags to guns.
Yes, guns. I have no idea how old I was when I first went with my parents to find a sleeping bag for scout camp, but the sight of guns on offer over the counter filled me with fascination and dread. Hunting rifles seemed enormous. The thought that people really buy those things made me shudder.
Baron Sports was a long and loyal tenant — in fact, the last tenant — of what is known as the Rodier Building, the ship-shaped entity that still stands boldly on the corner where Notre-Dame separates in two, with the small street becoming St-Maurice.
It was built in 1875 by CharlesSéraphin Rodier Jr., the nephew of Charles-Séraphin Rodier, mayor of Montreal from 1858 to 1862.
It has been empty since 2010. In the interval, the neighbourhood has been active, condos abound, people today think Lowney’s is a place to live, not a candy bar.
At least some of this development has been the result of the spillover from the other side of the Bonaventure Expressway and the area known as the Quartier de l’innovation.
Gestion Georges Coulombe, a Montreal real-estate firm that specializes in buying and refurbishing heritage buildings, acquired the Rodier from the city.
Now, in conjunction with a non-profit group called La Piscine, the company is about to transform it into what one might think of as a growth tank as opposed to a think tank.
These forward-thinkers are still stuck with using relatively old language to describe their new pursuits. They call the environment they want to build an incubator, the goal being to “create an environment to catalyze the community to the development and growth of cultural and creative enterprises.”
Not quite a school, not just a service provider, an incubator is a space where good ideas with viable economic potential can grow and their authors can get advice and experience to take it to the next step. That means developing a business plan to make the great idea something that can find its way in the hightech world market.
La Piscine board members David Moss and Christophe Billebaud say a fundamental part of their development plan is laying down roots in the physical environment of the neighbourhood, surrounded as they are by high-rise condo projects. The space will be flexible to showcase a variety of activities from the visual arts, music, dance and visual media.
There is no specific definition as to what kind of great idea might be entertained when the Rodier opens its doors in the latter part of 2018. Not knowing what might come in means, of course, no one can guess what might come out the other end.
What’s clear, though, is the desire to explore what can happen when the arts, technology and entrepreneurship sit under a 142-year-old roof and … incubate.