The Snowdon Theatre will soon have a new owner.
Global News has learned that there have been several bids to buy the building from the City of Montreal, but the landmark could have an entirely new vocation.
“It looks like we have a bidder who will pay a fair price,” Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough councillor Marvin Rotrand said.
Three bidders were vying to buy the heritage building.
BluCap Snowdon offered just over 135,000. A second company, Universal Linens Marimac, offered $1,011,000. And finally, a third company, the highest bidders, capped off at $1.6 million.
The city is ready to close a deal with them. The company is based out of a condo building in the area known as Le Triangle.
The condo belongs to Viviana Raichman. Global News spoke to Raichman, who said her partners don’t have concrete plans yet, but the central idea of their project is to revive the area.
“They will build on the site a building that’s either commercial or commercial and residential,” Rotrand said.
“But it will respect the zoning — it can’t go higher than six stories — and conserve the facade of the building and the sign.”
The bidding opened last December and closed in March.
It was the second time the city had tried to sell the theatre. No one bid on the landmark early in 2016 when it was first put up for sale.
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: City puts Montreal’s historic Snowdon Theatre up for sale
People in the area have mixed emotions about the building’s sale.
“I’m shattered — ‘I fall upon the thorns of life, I pricked, I bleed’ — because the theatre is a necessary reflection of life,” passerby, David Flicker said, quoting a line of poetry.
“You can’t just leave it like this, so I don’t have a problem with it,” another passerby, Kevin Lloyd, said.
The sale has not been finalized yet, as it has to go through a regulatory process at the borough to be approved.
The borough has a say in the sale and officials insist they won’t go ahead with the deal unless they have a signed agreement that the new project will integrate the building’s current facade.
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