Good morning. I am Jacques Primeau, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Quartier des spectacles Partnership. I am accompanied by Mr. Pierre Fortin, who is our Executive Director.
We thank you for having accepted the brief we tabled, and for this opportunity to submit a few potential avenues for reflexion.
The Quartier des spectacles de Montréal has now become a world-class cultural hub. It was born about 20 years ago from a desire to build a cultural, new-generation space to support a variety of cultural and civic events. It was built thanks to the concerted action of dynamic cultural actors in the downtown area, and thanks to the support of the City of Montreal and the governments of Canada and Quebec. More than $200 million was invested in the public spaces, for instance.
A quarter of all show tickets sold in Quebec are sold in the Quartier des spectacles. That means more than 1.5 million performance tickets, in one of the most concentrated cultural spaces in North America. In this neighbourhood, there are multiple summer festivals, in seven public areas. One obvious example is the Festival international de Jazz de Montréal, but there are also around 40 other festivals that take place in these public spaces, and they remain active throughout the year.
It is the partnership's responsibility to bring about a dynamic balance between the residents, the retailers, the business community and the cultural actors, all of whom benefit from the increased foot traffic generated by this cultural crossroads. The challenge consists in maintaining the residents' quality of life despite all of this effervescent activity.
Public investments in the Quartier des spectacles have also attracted private real estate projects. Over the past 10 years, these projects generated economic real estate spinoffs of more than $2.2 billion.
This development has created major pressure on real estate values and on the cost of establishing households and cultural organizations in the area. Ultimately, if nothing is done, the Quartier des spectacles could become an unaffordable area for many of its creators and its most dynamic venues.
The additional number of visitors drawn to the downtown area by the cultural crossroads that is the Quartier des spectacles benefits all of the economic actors of the metropolis, and that regularly raises questions about the equitable sharing of costs and benefits.