Bad times when city parking lots get priority over heritage, culture, and environmental responsibility, let alone a real consultation process with citizens.
Artists evicted in favour of city vehicles
Paul Machnik, a tenant of Studio PM at 4000 St. Patrick St., says he’s invested at least $50,000 to renovate his studio over the seven years he’s been in the building. The city has evicted him and 15 other tenants.
Photograph by: PIERRE OBENDRAUF THE GAZETTE, The Gazette
Montreal’s pledge to value culture and history should be working to save a landmark industrial building along the Lachine Canal from the city’s plan to expropriate and demolish it so it can relocate a public works yard to park municipal vehicles.
Yet despite the rarity and historical significance of the former Second World War shipbuilding factory at 4000 St. Patrick St. and the cost to taxpayers to expel 15 cultural businesses and artists that have not yet found another place to go, the expropriation process is moving ahead.
The printers, designers, furniture makers, framers, painter, set designer and other cultural entrepreneurs who work out of the building began receiving official notices of expropriation from the city and the Sud-Ouest borough on Monday, part of a bureaucratic chain reaction that was triggered by the Quebec transportation department’s plan to rebuild the Turcot Interchange. (more…)
