Café Cleopatra is going to court. True, the artists of Café Cleo already won the case against their eviction in the court of public opinion, the OCPM ruling confirmed their victory and the recent attention paid to the Dead Dolls appeal to Prince Charles reinforced it, but now they’re taking the case to a court of law.

When the public supports you, but the Mayor’s against you and the federal government isn’t doing anything to help protect their own historic site, where do you turn? Well, for members of the Dead Doll Dancers, the answer is simple: Prince Charles.

In the 1980s, Christian Yaccarini was on the administration council of the Association générale des étudiants de l’UQAM when he was found guilty of stealing the contents of a caisse étudiant (student-run bank).

I went to City Hall Monday night wondering if Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay would be successful in ramming through the Angus Development Corporation’s controversial Quadrilaterre project or if citizen opposition either at the meeting’s question period itself or at the recent OCPM meetings would sway a councilor to take a stand or maybe force the mayor himself to rethink his decision.

Ramming a controversial project through and making executive decisions that go against the ruling of a public consultation body aren’t new in politics.

The Angus Development Corporation stated Tuesday that it would be rethinking its plan to erect an office tower on the west side of St-Laurent Boulevard between Ste-Catherine and Rene-Levesque.

After hearing from from over 300 people at meetings last June and reading 32 briefs, the Office de Consultation Publique de Montreal released its report on the proposed Quadrilaterre project slated to begin construction on the Lower Main next January.

At a recent press conference, Christian Yaccarini, the president of the Société de développement Angus, defended his plans to replace venues on the lower Main with an office tower by promising that he would try and relocate the artists currently performing at Café Cleopatre.

This morning at 10:00 Societe de Development ANGUS (SDA) held a press conference at the Angus Yards. The press conference comes after 9 public consultation meetings, the tones of which were identifiably in contrast with the development plans for the area.

If you had “a vision of development based on the enhancement of cultural activities” as the Quartier des Spectacles project does, would you want to evict artists by replacing their popular performance space with an office tower that nobody asked for?