A vast mixed real estate project is under construction in Pointe-Saint-Charles on the former CN land. Ultimately, there will be 900 apartments, with social housing and a housing cooperative, but also green spaces, a public square and even the first “blue-green” alley in Quebec with ecological rainwater management.
The people who take up residence there will be lucky; in addition to being next to Building 7, they owe one to the collective behind the creation of the community space where you can have a beer, repair your bike, visit a farm, but also make pottery or welding.
Building 7 is above all a place that symbolizes the strength of citizen power in a neighborhood which, like so many others, has become gentrified. “Building 7 has created a place of life and exchange in the neighborhood. Cohesion too,” praises Jocelyne Bernier while she is at the checkout counter at the non-profit neighborhood grocery store Le Détour, managed by members and volunteers.
Next to the grocery store is the microbrewery Les sans-taverne, where author Anna Kruzynski recently launched Quartier en Lutte, a book in which she looks back on the two decades of “social struggle” in Pointe-Saint-Charles that led to the creation of Building 7.
“Struggle” is a word that we will often hear during our site visit with Caroline Monast-Landriault, head of external communications for Collectif 7 à nous, born almost 15 years ago. “I joined the project in 2016. The fight had started a good decade ago,” she emphasizes.
Building 7 occupies land which belonged to CN and which was leased until 2003 by the transport multinational Alstom. In June 2005, Loto-Québec considered moving the Montreal Casino there in collaboration with Cirque du Soleil. After much citizen mobilization, the project was aborted and a symbolic flag was planted in the hope that at least a small part of the former CN land could not be privatized. After all, the former industrial zone made up a third of the area of the neighborhood affectionately known as “The Point.”
We are skipping steps – particularly regarding negotiations with the Mach Group – but it was in 2009 that the Collectif 7 à nous was born, which led a major popular development operation to transform the 7th of the 13 buildings listed on the land into a self-managed social center.
Judith Cayer was at the heart of “the struggle.” A struggle that bore fruit with a place that is part of his daily life and that of his children. “I was 26 years old. I am 42. This project has been my life […] There is dignity and pride in that, she says. It’s a collective pride, something that unites us and that inhabits our lives and our families… It’s strong. »
Last Wednesday, the launch of the book Quartier en strugue allowed us to take a step back from all the progress we have made. “We felt it in people, the idea that “wow, this exists”. »
It took years and endless “we’re almost there” before the Collectif 7 à nous was able to take over the premises, renovate them and open them to the public in 2018.
In the collaborative workshops of Building 7, artists, cyclists, photographers, etc. come together in a DIY spirit.
Upstairs, there is a photo studio, a digital printing workshop and a youth arcade managed by Press Start Coop. But the most impressive is undoubtedly the Atelier La Coulée, where you can work metal and where there is a foundry.
However, only part of the old industrial building has been used so far. A second phase of development will allow the arrival of a CPE, the Pointe-Saint-Charles Art School and the Action Gardien development corporation, which brings together community organizations in the neighborhood.
To use the words of Judith Cayer, do you feel it, “the deep community fabric” that watches over Pointe-Saint-Charles?