Between the Village and Promenade Ontario, there is a segment of the street of the same name, near the Frontenac metro station, which was in dire need of love.
A few weeks ago, the Junco café opened on the corner of Montgomery Street, near Bain Mathieu. A restaurant will soon follow, named Éléonore, and which will also be managed by the SUPER group (Minéral bar, Cour Arrière, Waverly bar, etc.).
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Café Junco is located at 2816 Ontario Street East.
The two new gourmet addresses in the Sainte-Marie district – which really needed them – are part of the Mellem Ville-Marie residential project, which brings together 216 rental apartments in two neighboring buildings. In the middle, we find a sort of small public square which allows cars to enter the underground parking lot, but which could possibly be used as a temporary event space.
What we found before on this land located to the north of a vast island of greenery which belongs to Canadian Pacific? Warehouses. “It was almost a no man’s land here,” says Mathieu Ménard, from the group SUPER. The latter knows what he is talking about since he and his partner Antoine Ormandy are the owners of the Blind Pig located further east on Ontario Street, beyond the viaduct after Moreau Street.
Let’s say that the rejuvenation of Place Frontenac – once dismal and disused – has greatly helped the area around the metro station of the same name.
“Create a community”
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Mathieu Ménard, from the SUPER group, and Étienne Payette Lebeau, marketing and customer experience director at Maître Carré
If the real estate developer Maître Carré contacted the SUPER group instead of a chain, for example, it was to have “quality control” on the two businesses located on the ground floor of its buildings in Mellem Ville- Married.
“We want to create a community,” summarizes Étienne Payette Lebeau, marketing and customer experience director at Maître Carré. Between the tenants, but also in the neighborhood.
We want to add something to a neighborhood and not change it.
Étienne Payette Lebeau, marketing and customer experience director at Maître Carré
When we visited, the Junco café had only been open for a few days and already there was a steady stream of customers. “An alcohol license, expected shortly, will allow the café to live in the evening,” announces Mathieu Ménard. “We are waiting for a fresh pasta machine and we will concoct an evening menu,” he adds.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
The Éléonore refreshment bar will open shortly
If Junco is Italian-inspired and wears cream and pistachio colors, the Éléonore restaurant will be a refreshment bar where you can eat Asian-inspired dishes in a “wilder” atmosphere and a decor dominated by leather, wood and rock.
Mid-range
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
The Mellem Ville-Marie show apartment
As for the 216 apartments, they are arranged according to 113 different plans designed by the architectural firm ADHOC, while the interior design is signed by Maison Edwar. Rents range from $1,325 for a studio (with internet, heating, air conditioning, electricity, fixtures and appliances included) to $3,385 for a three-bedroom apartment with a terrace.
It’s mid-range, says Étienne Payette Lebeau.
For a real estate developer, a 100% rental project allows you to remain manager of the premises when everything is built, underlines the person responsible for the customer experience. “It’s a way to have a longer-term impact with our buildings and to develop them by us and for us. »
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
One of the common areas
In the shared workspace, where there are also closed offices and a conference room, there are exclusive playlists prepared by DJ Kelly. Maître Carré wants to organize conferences and wine tastings, for example.
Maître Carré also manages a tenants page on Facebook and will offer tenants a subscription to the application Sharing Clubwhich facilitates the loan of objects between neighbors.
The goal is to create a living environment. “We want people to talk to each other. »
And it works: tenants have even launched a book club.
Beautify or gentrify a neighborhood?
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Daniella Johnson-Meneghini occupies one of the workstations available to tenants in the shared workspace.
When we visited, Daniella Johnson-Meneghini was working in the co-working space (with a coffee from Junco!) and she said she had just returned from a weekend in a chalet with other tenants. She praised her new home. “I really feel like I’m in a community. »
The young professional has lived in the Center-South for 15 years. After learning that she would be evicted from her apartment, she happened to pass by Mellem Ville-Marie. “When I visited the model apartment, I felt at home,” she says. It was really the urban sensitivity of the project and its community vision that spoke to me. It’s on a human scale. »
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
On the roof, we find what Maître Carré calls an “agricultural promenade”.
Daniella Johnson-Meneghini does not miss the time when Place Frontenac and its IGA were not renovated. “We are in revitalization and not gentrification,” she said.
Étienne Payette Lebeau also insists on the fact that Mellem Ville-Marie adds to the neighborhood without changing it. During the work, Maître Carré set up a sort of temporary rental office in the neighboring store, Le Sino, frequented by artists from the graffiti world. He also entrusted the creation of a mural work to the TYXNA collective. “We have a “we integrate” approach and not “we impose ourselves”,” he argues
Maître Carré is also building another Mellem project on rue Sherbrooke, near the Cadillac metro station, in the former Grace Dart hospital for 2025, and the real estate developer has just inaugurated another in Gatineau.