A day after Montreal music hall La Tulipe announced it was temporarily closing because of a court order, the city is promising to change a bylaw to protect entertainment venues and bars from noise complaints.
On Tuesday, the Plateau-Mont-Royal venue said it was closing “for the time being” after the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered it to prevent any noise from being heard by residents of the building next door.
It’s the latest chapter in a years-long legal saga about noise levels with the owner of that building.
On Thursday, the City of Montreal will hold an emergency session to exclude music halls, bars and restaurants from the Plateau’s noise regulation bylaw.
“The impact of the judgement is larger than just for La Tulipe,” said Luc Rabouin, mayor of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough and president of the city’s executive committee.
La Tulipe has been around since 1913 and has welcomed artists such as The National and Cœur de Pirate.
Montreal comedian Cathy Fuoco was scheduled to perform at the venue on March 7, but now that won’t be possible.
“It was going to be on my 50th birthday at La Tulipe,” Fuoco said. “And for me, it’s such a disappointment because I was really looking forward for it and I’m working really hard for that day. And yesterday, I mean, I was so sad. I was sad and I was talking to my friends who were asking me about what are you going to do? Where are you going to do it? And I told them, well, there’s nowhere else I want to do it.”
La Tulipe’s troubles began in 2016 when the new owner of the building next door to the concert venue obtained a renovation permit to transform a commercial space into a residential space. The municipality admitted that was a mistake.
What followed was a series of complaints, injunctions and lawsuits from that new owner.
“One mistake cannot and should not erase 100 and some years of culture,” Fuoco told CityNews. “The French Canadian culture, Montreal’s culture, Quebec’s culture. I mean, it’s really, really sad.”
WATCH: Montreal music venue temporarily closes after court ruling on noise
The news of La Tulipe closing shocked Montrealers, who feel the court decision could lead to the closure of many other venues across the city.
“Please know that we’re going to work really hard because we know that now, what’s at stake is the identity and the vitality of our city,” said city councillor Ericka Alneus, who is responsible for culture, heritage, gastronomy, and nightlife at the city’s executive committee.
The Opposition calls the proposed bylaw change “too little, too late.”
“They’ve been waiting for the closure of the La Tulipe to finally made a modification in the regulation of the Plateau-Mont-Royal,” said Julien Hénault-Ratelle, Ensemble Montréal’s spokesperson for housing, real estate strategy, economic development, urban planning and LGBTQ+ community relations.
“But again this modification is only for one of the boroughs. It does not affect all of the other boroughs across Montreal for example Ville-Marie, Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Rosemont and the Sud-Ouest, where we have the same kind of issues.
“And again, for the specific case of La Tulipe, we don’t even know if those modifications are going to have an impact on this specific situation because the complaints have been made before the modification of the bylaw.”
Rabouin couldn’t confirm if changing the bylaw will allow La Tulipe to continue operating as it was. Going forward, he says they will be continuing to monitor noise complaints, but with objective numbers in decibels.
“We already have a (methodology),” he said. “In the Plateau-Mont-Royal, we have a noise technician that is a specialist on that. We’re the only borough with that because we have a lot of venues in the Plateau. … It’s really technical. We evaluate the sound heard in the venue, outside the venue, and we can evaluate if it’s acceptable or not with an objective norm. There’s a norm, so we just apply the norm. So it’s not zero noise, it’s just an acceptable level of noise.”
The bylaw change is scheduled to take effect in October.