Montreal’s Village rainbow balls are returning, but a year-round pedestrianized street isn’t guaranteed
“We’re in the Village, guys, we can say ‘balls,’” Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada quipped Thursday, announcing the return of the iconic rainbow-coloured balls that once formed a canopy over Ste-Catherine St. in Montreal’s Village.
The return of the art installation, which the city took down in 2019, is among the changes coming to Ste-Catherine St. E., between Berri St. and de Lorimier Ave., under the Ensemble Montréal administration’s revamped pedestrianization project.
Another major change announced Thursday: the year-round pedestrianization envisioned in the original project is no longer guaranteed.
Martinez Ferrada now says the project will have a “flexible layout” when construction finishes in 2030 to allow a year-round pedestrian configuration while keeping open the option to allow cars on the street. The art installation will return once construction ends.
The stretch of road, which has been closed to traffic every summer for the last two decades, had been pegged for total pedestrianization under former Projet Montréal mayor Valérie Plante. In the nearby Quartier des spectacles, a span of Ste-Catherine St. W. between St-Laurent Blvd. and Bleury St. is already closed to car traffic year-round.
“I don’t have the answer to your question,” Martinez Ferrada said Thursday when asked whether she envisioned a pedestrianized Ste-Catherine St. E. in the first winter after construction is completed.
“The merchants’ concerns are that a winter pedestrianization is very difficult to carry out in this moment,” she said, speaking at Place du Village amid the city’s Pride festival. Year-round foot traffic would likely need to increase before merchants would support a winter pedestrian street, she said.
Still, the mayor said a 12-month pedestrianization remains the goal.
“Personally, I dream of a pedestrian street from Papineau to Atwater,” Martinez Ferrada said. “It could become one of the biggest pedestrian streets in the world.”
The opposition was quick to frame the mayor’s announcement as indecisive, arguing Martinez Ferrada was refusing to commit to the long-planned pedestrian project.
“Today we’re saying: ‘Maybe someday, we still don’t know,’” said Christopher McCray, a Projet Montréal councillor for the district of Ste-Marie in the Ville-Marie borough.
“When the road reopens to vehicle traffic (in the fall), we see foot traffic decrease because the experience is less enjoyable,” he said, rejecting the argument the neighbourhood should get busier before closing the street to traffic year-round.
Projet Montréal had already consulted with merchants and residents, McCray said, “and now we seem to be returning to the drawing board.”
“The key word is flexibility,” said Claude Pinard, chairperson of the city’s executive committee and councillor for the Ville-Marie district of St-Jacques, which overlaps with the Village.
“We need to do the construction because of the infrastructure,” he said. “We’re taking the opportunity to make a project adapted to needs.”
The city plans to begin construction in the fall of 2027, after patios close. Workers will update the street’s aging sewers before implementing the redesign, which will line the street with 270 trees and enough new benches to seat 300 people.
When completed, the stretch of Ste-Catherine St. will be flattened to bring the sidewalks to the same level as the road. The kilometre-long span between Papineau Ave. and Berri St. will be configured to give the city the option between implementing year-round pedestrianization or allowing traffic on the street.
“Merchants on the street know how much this project is necessary,” said Gabrielle Rondy, executive director of the local commercial development corporation. “We have the opportunity to create a street that is prettier, greener, but most of all adapted to the people who visit it every day.”
Rondy said she was happy the city “took the time to revisit certain elements of the project. Moving quickly is important, but moving in the right direction is even more important.”
Pedestrianizing the street is “1,000 per cent” good for business, said Alex Cho, who works at Dépanneur Centre-Sud, east of Plessis St. on Ste-Catherine St. E. But “I don’t think you need to do it year-round.”
Businesses on the street do best in summer, Cho said. “No one wants to go out when it’s cold.”
“What’s decreasing business is the homelessness,” he said, suggesting the issue was responsible for a recent drop in clientele.
Homelessness is a shared responsibility between the city and the Quebec government, Martinez Ferrada said Thursday.
“We’re working very hard,” she said. “More and more, you’re going to hear us say that we’re doing our part and Quebec has to do its part.”
