Cité du Multimédia

The Cité du Multimédia is a neighborhood in Montreal, Quebec, located between Vieux-Montréal, Griffintown and Downtown Montreal. The neighborhood is the result of a vast real-estate project launched in the late 1990s which sought to convert a semi-abandoned zone of Industrial Revolution-era buildings into an industrial cluster for information technology.

The Société de Développement de Montréal possessed land holdings dating back to the Doré administration's failed Quartier des Récluses initiative, in which lands were bought by the SIMPA to make way for the project. In exchange for handing this over, the SDM gained a minority stake in a joint venture with the real estate arms of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and the FTQ Fonds de Solidarité to fund the construction of the Cité, which occurred in eight phases, with additional phases having been planned. The Parti Québécois Bouchard Government of Québec then gave payroll tax credits to employers for moving to the new Cité du Multimédia buildings.

After the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and the elimination in 2003 by the Liberal Charest government of new tax incentives for information technology jobs in the district, phase 9 and others were cancelled, and the structures were sold by the joint venture to the private sector.

Many high-tech companies are still located in the area, while phase 8 is presently occupied by the municipal government. The property values in this part of Montreal are very high. The neighbourhood has 6,000 workers, and an average salary of $73,000 per year. This figure is almost 25% above Montréal's average.

Groupe Cardinal Hardy and Groupe Provencher & Roy architectes collaborated on the district's urban design.^[1]

Controversy

Then-finance minister Bernard Landry had been criticized by members of Montreal's real-estate community and some high-tech entrepreneurs when Finance Ministry programs enticed companies to relocate to Cité Multimédia and nearby Cité du commerce électronique in order to receive tax assistance.^[2] In response, Landry announced the creation of CDTIs located in mid-sized cities throughout Quebec, and later the installation of technology clusters in rural areas, such as the Technoparc Rolland in Sainte-Adèle, Quebec.

References

1. ^ Chodikoff, Ian (October 2003). "Strategic Urbanism". Canadian Architect (Business Information Group). http://www.cdnarchitect.com/issues/ISarticle.asp?aid=1000143711#. 
2. ^ MacDonald, Don. "Tax credit targeted at boosting e-business". Montreal Gazette (Canwest). http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/business/story.html?id=58f5e20d-ebeb-46c6-9bf6-5b4933e06f50. Retrieved 2008-04-13. 

External links

• Allied Properties REIT - Cité Multimedia
• Rose, Owen (2007-11-18). "Montréal Architecture (No.6)". URBANPHOTO. http://www.urbanphoto.net/blog/2007/11/18/montreal-architecture-no6/. Retrieved 2008-03-28. 
• Montrealbits.com: Cité Multimedia