Plante’s plea: Downtown needs you
Mayor unveils stimulus package aimed at revitalizing city's core
Montrealers, please come back.
That was the message Mayor Valérie Plante and culture and tourism industry officials sent Tuesday in unveiling a financial package aimed at revitalizing the city's downtown core.
Montreal will set aside $400,000 for urban design and cultural activities in a bid to lure visitors downtown, Plante announced Tuesday. Several public spaces will be redesigned in keeping with health guidelines, with 1,000 lowcost parking spaces made available at Complexe Desjardins and Palais des congrès to entice drivers.
“Downtown Montreal has been deserted by the workers, the students and the millions of tourists who visit us every year,” Plante told reporters Tuesday at a news conference. “It's a reality that we have to live with. We've decided to put our energy, our creativity, our resources in common to find solutions and attract people downtown.”
Even with its finances stretched by the pandemic, “it was very important for the city of Montreal to send a clear message, to support our partners and say: 'We believe in downtown, we love it and we're going to help it,' ” Plante added.
Starting July 31, seven large terrasses and public squares will be set up at locations such as Jardins du Centre St-jax, Place d'youville and the corner of St-laurent and René-lévesque Blvds., the city said.
Pop-up performances — from live music to circus acts and mobile cabaret — will take place on weekends in various locations from Thursday through Oct. 15. More than 150 artists will be involved in giving roughly 200 surprise performances, organizers said.
Discounts on various attractions, hotels and restaurants will be offered via the mtl.org website.
Effective immediately, parking at Palais des congrès will be discounted by 40 per cent all summer long, while Complexe Desjardins cuts evening and weekend parking rates by 50 per cent. Weekday visitors to Complexe Desjardins can receive one hour of free parking with a proof of purchase of $25, and two hours of free parking for purchases of $50 or more.
“We're asking all Montrealers to drop by downtown over the next two weeks, to experience it in a new way,” Tourisme Montréal head Yves Lalumière told reporters. "It's the perfect time to take advantage of the city.”
Added Monique Simard, head of the Quartier des Spectacles: “Montrealers, please come downtown. It belongs to you. We can’t disclose everything, but I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
The measures announced Tuesday, which Lalumière said will be accompanied by an advertising campaign targeting other Quebec regions, follow the publication last month of an action plan by an advisory committee that Plante set up in May.
Committee members identified a range of steps to prevent downtown’s commercial base from collapsing, including a new subsidy program to help struggling businesses and the creation of new pedestrian areas, large terrasses and pop-up markets giving merchants the chance to use public space free of charge in a bid to lure customers back.
With Canada’s borders closed for the foreseeable future and university campuses empty, downtown Montreal can no longer count on the 100,000 university students who normally live in the area, or on the 11 million tourists who visit the city annually.
Montreal will probably attract no more than one million tourists in 2020, Lalumière said. Tourism-related revenue will probably plunge 90 per cent from the $4 billion that the city normally takes in, he added.
“This is a serious, unusual situation, and it’s important to stimulate demand,” Simard said.
To make matters worse, no more than five per cent of the estimated 300,000 office tower workers are back working downtown, said Michel Leblanc, Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal CEO. Some downtown restaurants that would normally serve 300 meals a day now have to get by with as few as eight daily meals, he said.
Seventy-six per cent of Chamber of Commerce members are very concerned about the fate of downtown, Leblanc added, citing the results of a poll that will be released Wednesday.
It’s now up to the provincial and federal governments to follow suit with cash injections of their own, Plante said. Negotiations with both levels of government are progressing “very well,” the mayor added.
“I expect the other levels of government will contribute even more than what the city is putting in,” Leblanc said in an interview after the news conference. “Montreal is making a very significant contribution given its financial capabilities, and the other governments should be even more committed.”
Montreal’s challenge is clear: preserving downtown’s retail base while office towers remain virtually empty.
“We’re talking about retailers, service companies, restaurants, everything that exists downtown to meet the needs of a massive customer base,” Leblanc said.
“These businesses are going through an extremely rough period. As time passes, there is a risk that they will collapse if there are no customers. We’ve seen this happen in some U.S. cities, and it takes a very long time for an ecosystem like this to recover. We have a few months before this collapse happens, which is why we’re acting now. We want to make people curious about downtown.”