A year ago, Bruno Marchand announced its plan to prevent the old Quebec from becoming a “cardboard Walt Disney”. Fourteen months later, strategies made of interventionism and incentives caused her first sparks to sparkle with the hope of crushing the flashing flame of the district of tourism, but more and more and more abandoned population.
While the capital of Quebec is attracting more and more people, his historical heart, emptying – the reality shared most cities listed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site. On the edge of Rue Saint-Jean and Côte de la Fabrique, at the top of souvenirs and confectionery, which swarms on artery, facades that give the neighborhood its European character, often hiding the stages left in the dilapidated.
“It has been several decades that have been completely unoccupied for several decades, where absolutely nothing happens,” said the district councilor in Cap-Aux district Mélissa Coulomb-Leduc. One of the causes is the high costs of renovation. »»
Old Quebec is increasingly devoted from its population to visit. The interior of the Hradec concentrates hotels and restaurants, but does not have a grocery store or public school. The city hopes to affect the invisible hand on the market, which ensures that Moose is easier to find than Miche Chleba in the neighborhood.
“We are fighting a little now, against the laws of supply and demand,” explains Mélissa Coulomb-Leduc. The best way to realize is that there are no local services in the old Quebec. »»
The central room in the city’s strategy is to bring a permanent population back to the district in the hope that the commercial framework will adapt to their needs.
“It’s an egg or pool logic,” the advisor explains. What comes earlier is not clear. We decided to walk a little and chew the rubber at the same time. »»
In December 2023, the city announced that the residents of the owners of Rue Saint-Jean and Côte de la Fabrique could now benefit from substantial help in transforming their dilapidated housing spaces. This initiative, inspired by Brussels, provides its first fruit: 17 seats are or are going to restore the chandelier to these dilapidated spaces. After restoration, they will not be able to adapt short -term leases.
The city estimates that the measure had the potential to create between 30 and 40 apartments. “It’s okay,” says wine-aux-diamants advisor. Other owners also expressed their interest. »»
Quebec also preaches an example with interventionism taken in the district. The city takes every opportunity to seize buildings capable of accommodation.
Shortly before Christmas, she received a boarding school Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague and the Nazareth home, both left, but according to Méliss Coulomb-Leduc is finally “several hundred units”.
Still at the end of last year, Quebec got his hands, for $ 2.9 million, at $ 1075, Rue Saint-Jean, a four-storey building with an exceptional duck, but still lacks a little love. The city is looking for a partner to dedicate the floor of the house, but intends to remain the owner of the commercial ground floor to ensure that the use of premises is focused on the population of the neighborhood and not on tourists.
“The fact that it is going through the hands of the city allows us to condition the conversion of this site,” explains the advisor-and therefore we avoid delivering old questions to luxury condoms. The city does not intend to stop there: By April, it also intends to close the acquisition of the Collins pavilion, located by a stone by Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, so that it too.
“We came to make important acquisitions in the old Quebec, which allows us to trust us in a very realistic way that the goal to bring back 500 inhabitants is achievable,” Mélissa Coulomb-Leduc said. This success would have value not only for the vitality of the district, but also for the symbol of French reality in America.
“There is a really strong value of identity in our eyes,” the advisor concludes, because one of the reasons that explains that Old Quebec is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is the preservation of French reality. How to embody it if no one is in the neighborhood? The return of the population here also causes the French language to shine in one of its historical bastions. »»
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