We cannot say that the opinions that have flowed since the announcement of the repair of the roof of the Olympic Stadium last February have erred by excess of creativity. Indeed, most of the time, we were served the litanies between, on one side, a business as usual particularly costly assumed by public funds, which would allow the hosting of a few big concerts per year, and, on the other, a “creative destruction” (but not creative) of the stadium, equally costly, making real estate developers salivate. Why not simply “close” and repurpose the stadium, just to take stock of the current social and environmental crises?
Last week, in a file of The Press, we put back on the table an option proposed in 2012, but never made public by the Olympic Park authorities: that of “winterizing” the stadium. This option would certainly make the stadium unusable in winter for its usual activities (fairs, conferences, concerts), but would cost, according to the file, around ten times less, in figures from ten years ago. This possibility raises important questions about the management of this issue and, obviously, about the democratic deficit in the granting of public funds to a project which, in the midst of the housing crisis, will ostensibly only benefit a handful of people.
Other possibilities exist. They are inspired by a theory of socio-ecological redirection which urges everyone to an intelligence and a policy of renunciation and closure with regard to a set of structures which will not disappear with the wave of a magic wand.
Closure and reassignment
For Montrealers, the stadium remains a common heritage to which we hold dear for a set of reasons: its history, symbol of a Quebec that speaks to the world, the nostalgia of the Expos, the practice of a sport, the festive moments on the Esplanade in summer, or simply its function as a beacon on the urban horizon. On the side of economic and political elites, the difficulty in disavowing individual and collective choices and the escalation of commitment (the cumulative costs) have created irreversibility.
However, we must admit that the stadium currently remains a stranded asset, an asset whose financial (and social) value is collapsing due to a set of constraints mainly linked to its maintenance. A stadium that no longer offers imagination.
This common heritage therefore becomes, because of its roof which constitutes a threat to its structural integrity, a “ruin” which, in the present situation, is capable of producing ever more ruins which would be attached to it (precarious lives in the neighborhood, spin-offs or “replacement” solutions reserved for the most well-off, harmful business models because they privatize the gains and socialize the costs, security risks if nothing is done to take care of them, etc.) .
There would therefore be reason to reinvest these ruins, financially, of course, to maintain the structure, but also in a human way, to take care of them together, and with respect for the varied, sometimes contradictory, attachments that connect us to the existence of the stadium. Close and rethink.
A process of sharing and citizen codedesign
We cannot say that the Olympic Stadium, from its origin, was the subject of any process of pooling, co-investigation, or any democratization. Would it have seen the light of day? In the current situation, we can only note the democratic divide still at work, for a project that is still just as pharaonic… of the status quo. Why, for example, not instead tackle the design of other options through pooling and design, in the form of participatory “closure” projects, prospective codedesign taking into account both the context of the neighborhood and the political, social and environmental realities of today?
By its position in the east of Montreal, straddling two neighborhoods, adjoining Espace pour la vie and its facilities, the Olympic Stadium is located in very fertile ground for, precisely, to engage in a set of practices of redirection of its destination towards innovative social uses. Such a process would allow us to take care of the stadium by closing it for the winter, continue the use of its rental spaces and use the tower and sports facilities, all while making seasonal use of the enclosure interior. But above all, the Montreal community could reclaim its use, and that of the Olympic Park in general.
We can think of a museum of Anthropocene project-mistakes or an innovative museum experience like that of the Museum zonder Muren, located in the Transvaal district of Amsterdam. Or even to a localized cultural and educational space, serving the community sector, coupled with social reintegration projects, or to a “collective autonomy factory” according to the needs of the community, to take up Collectif 7 à nous, which manages Building 7, in Pointe-Saint-Charles. Create new attachments, therefore, by inventing and designating with vulnerable people and neighborhood residents other futures for this ruin.
The original vision of a failed architect should not be sufficient reason for such a costly attachment to an already failed asset. Nor the reinscription of a pharaonic project doomed to serve only as a tomb for its own purposes (the Olympic Games, a long-disappeared sports team, expensive concerts, etc.). Pooling by and for the community would be all the more innovative: creating social and citizen bonds and assuming a reappropriation of the “right to the city” from infrastructures which, although failed, nevertheless have a deep meaning for all of us. Return the city to those who make it live and often can no longer live there.