Ville-Marie (La Cité du Multimédia)

The portrait

On a weekday morning on rue Prince, low light runs along the brick of the old foundry, still crowned by its tall pollution-control stack. Below, cyclists follow the Lachine Canal path.

History of the Cité du Multimédia

The district sits on the former faubourg des Récollets, west of Montréal's fortifications. The opening of the Lachine Canal in 1825 drew foundries, rolling mills, sawmills and flour mills, which worked here until the 1930s. Then industry faded, and the Bonaventure Expressway cut the area off from Griffintown. The canal itself is now a national historic site.

A city for multimedia

In the late 1990s, the Québec government launched the Cité du Multimédia, a cluster of information-technology companies backed by a payroll tax credit. The district was built in eight phases and remains, today, mostly an office district.

What the walls kept

The Fonderie Darling, now a contemporary art centre with exhibitions and artist residencies, kept its brick and its stack. That stack still marks the district's skyline. At the edge of Old Montréal, the Quais de la Commune converted old harbour grain warehouses, according to Le Devoir, with 12 to 14 foot ceilings. That is the hard loft: big, open volumes inherited from industry. Newer, Le McGill Ouest packs 244 units into two brick-and-glass buildings joined by a glazed corridor, built in two phases starting in 2006.

Living in the Cité du Multimédia

The weekday belongs to offices. In the evening, you walk to the canal, whose Parks Canada path runs from the Old Port to Lac Saint-Louis, or book a table at Le Serpent, housed in the Fonderie Darling. Square-Victoria–OACI metro is a 6-minute walk from Le McGill Ouest. The area suits those who want to live at the edge of Old Montréal, in the Cité du Multimédia, a district devoted mostly to offices.

Every property has a story. Here, it often begins in a foundry or a grain warehouse. Our job is to help you find the one that becomes yours. Olivier Mailloux, real estate broker, and Amélie Flanagan, real estate broker, work with buyers and sellers in the Cité du Multimédia and across Montréal.