What will become of the The Bay's former flagship downtown Montreal store?
The former flagship Hudson's Bay store in Montreal helped to launch the city's new downtown around Ste. Catherine Street.
'This prompted Ste. Catherine to become the department store avenue of Montreal,' explained Dinu Bumbaru, spokesperson for Heritage Montreal.
Now that The Bay has closed, business owners worry what will become of the large space in such a central location, just after the city spent millions of dollars revamping Phillips Square and the iconic street.
'This can't be a black hole,' Bumbaru stressed. 'It has to be an active part of the city.'
Merchants and business groups doubt most commerce in the area will be negatively affected by the closure but caution that if the building is left empty for too long, it could become a blight in the area. Some fear it could become a focal point for the unhoused and attract criminal activity.
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Glenn Castanheira, executive director of Montréal Centre-Ville, points out that the building is prime real estate, so it's only a matter of time before a new project is proposed for redevelopment.
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'Which is why the key is making it all the way until that project goes forward,' he observed.
But what project is ideal?
According to merchants around Philips Square, business there is set to take off, thanks in part to two hotels in there and a planned condo tower.
'Foot traffic is up and everything around Phillips Square is actually booming right now,' Castanheira told Global News.
If things are done right at the old Hudson's Bay location, he and merchants argue, the area could be transformed immensely.
One popular idea is to build residences.
'If people live here, they're going want to play here as well,' Concordia University senior economics lecturer Moshe Lander reasoned. 'So they're going to want bars, restaurants and other things to entertain them, and so you can have growth in this part of downtown.'
He and others some point to what Birks jewelry store did just across the street — keeping the jewelry store on the ground floor and converting the upper ones into a high-end hotel — and say a similar model should be employed at the old Bay location.
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'On the upper floors, what can really work in that area is either hotel, or residential, or both,' Castanheira reasoned.
With the right project, he argues, that building could once again help influence downtown Montreal, just as it did more than two centuries ago.
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