Montreal employees and elected officials are preparing to return to Montreal city hall after five years of work. The heritage building, restored at a cost of $211 million, will be inaugurated on June 7.
Starting May 17, the first cohorts of employees will move to the building at 275, rue Notre-Dame Est, after having spent the last five years in the neighboring building, the Lucien-Saulnier building. The other teams, including those from the Archives, will do so during the month of June.
The municipal council and urban agglomeration council meetings scheduled for the week of June 17 will therefore take place in the revamped council room. “This is the great return of our work at 275, Notre-Dame Est in a restored town hall which is focused on openness and transparency, and which the population will be able to make their own from the month of June”, commented Wednesday the mayor of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie and majority leader, François Limoges.
The restoration work on the hotel, which began in 2019, turned out to be more complex than expected.
In 2015, the Coderre administration considered bringing the building up to standard at a cost of 22.5 million. However, the City noted in 2017 that it would need to replace the electromechanical equipment and the heating network. Delays caused by the pandemic, rising costs in the field of construction and unforeseen events discovered during the work gradually increased the bill which ultimately reached 196.5 million, to which is added an amount of 14, 5 million for information technology equipment and furniture, for a total of 211 million.
The City ensures that it has respected the budget of 211 million announced in January 2023.
Built between 1872 and 1878, Montreal City Hall was destroyed by a fire in March 1922. It was subsequently rebuilt and a floor was added.
The work undertaken in 2019 was significant and took longer than expected. The gas heating network was replaced by an electric system. The exterior facades and all the wooden windows have been restored. In the municipal council room, the stained glass windows were cleaned and the seats of elected officials were renovated. The project also made it possible to reconfigure the interior spaces on the ground floor in order to make places more user-friendly for citizens.
For their part, the Archives, which had been temporarily relocated five years ago to a building on rue Saint-Denis, will move as of June 3. They will reintegrate the city hall’s vaults which have been modernized and will offer better conditions for the preservation of precious documents and objects. Service to users will therefore be interrupted between June 3 and 30. The new consultation room by appointment will be open from August 6.