As one of the flagship projects of the Campus Montréal fundraising campaign, the new Université de Montréal science campus will be erected on the former Outremont rail yard, which sits at the heart of one of Montreal’s most creative neighbourhoods.

This new teaching and research complex will house the Université de Montréal Science Building, the Polytechnique Montréal Engineering Building, and other academic and industrial institutions, including the Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, a combined Université de Montréal and Polytechnique Montréal initiative and one of the flagship projects of our major fundraising campaign.

In pursuit of ambitious goals

“The Outremont satellite campus will be much more than just buildings,” explains Yves Beauchamp, director-general in charge the site’s development. “The idea is not to move everything lock, stock and barrel from the current Mount-Royal location to the new site, but to take advantage of the opportunity we’ve been given to implement best practices in integrated urban campus design. A campus that will ensure a real synergy between the students, professors and researchers, as well as with international industry and university partners – on top of providing a quality campus life.”

The main goal of the project is to provide an inspirational learning and research environment based in the community, where students can achieve their full potential and stimulate their creative thinking, and where interdisciplinary synergy, knowledge transfer, research partnerships, and research-industry networking are encouraged and facilitated.

In the long run, the satellite campus will help build stronger relations between the university and the community and redefine our innovative capacity. Beauchamp believes that it will also enhance Montreal’s position as an international university city: “The co-existence of these various elements will produce a world-class centre of excellence, with the highest concentration of researchers, students, patents and research work in the country.”

Creating an innovation district

According to Beauchamp, a creative and avant-garde neighbourhood is one with productive urban spaces benefiting from an innovation ecosystem in which public organizations, universities and businesses blend with the area’s social and cultural fabric to make a positive impact on the whole community.

The Outremont campus will be developed according to best practices in the field of creative and innovative districts and campuses; we will certainly draw inspiration from the 22@ Barcelona district and Grenoble’s GIANT innovation campus where, in the latter case, the institutions are integrated into the community using an approach based on six elements: learning, seeking, creating/innovating, living, working and playing.

“Integrating the community’s economic, social and cultural dimensions into campus life releases a positive energy that inspires everyone involved, directly or indirectly. We promote innovation in every sense of the word, not just technical,” Beauchamp said.

Creative communities bring added value!

The first three elements are found in most traditional university campuses, where the acts of teaching and research typically spur innovation. “But the elements of living, working and playing are specific to residential neighbourhoods, hence the aim to integrate an educational institution with its immediate surroundings. And those around the disused rail yard in Outremont are rather exceptional! For one, because of the several boroughs (Outremont, Rosemont-Petite-Patrie, Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc Extension and Town of Mount-Royal) that encircle the campus site; and for another, because the social structure built by the area’s creative communities helps push Montreal to the forefront of innovative cities.”

These communities consist of artists and entrepreneurs in Mile-End, Mile-Ex (Park Extension) and, slightly further north, of architects. “After studying integrated campus initiatives in other parts of the world, it’s clear their planners went to great lengths to design an attractive environment that would entice people to move there and establish new communities. In our case, we already have them!”

Minimizing the impact of gentrification

Whenever a deteriorating area attracts artists, entrepreneurs, and creators from the underground scene, who transform the area into a fertile breeding ground for talented people, it leads to an economic expansion and higher rents; sooner or later, residents are forced to move away. Université de Montréal is aware that maintaining the balance of the urban space around the Outremont site will depend on minimizing the impact of gentrification.

“The City of Montreal has given us permission to build social housing units geared to the needs of the artistic and entrepreneurial community,” Beauchamp said. “We are also working with the neighbouring boroughs and economic and social stakeholders to adopt measures to help slow the process of gentrification.”

The Outremont campus: an inclusive project

The development of the Outremont site will have a positive impact on the economic, cultural and social development of Montreal, of Quebec, and of Canada. It will encourage the establishment of teaching and research partnerships, promote economic development and job creation, create available housing near the university, and provide a stimulating living environment. The academic community will be able to use it as a powerful international recruitment and retention tool. The neighbourhood will benefit from more green areas, meticulous urban planning, and an enhanced quality of life – in short, the complete revitalization of a disused industrial site.

“By combining the driving force of our researchers and students with that of the district’s entrepreneurs, artists, shopkeepers, and other local stakeholders, our institutions and partners will fuel an extraordinary economic, social and cultural boom that will benefit the province of Quebec and beyond,” stated John Parisella, Executive Director of Campus Montréal.

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