Published May 4, 2024

Wellington North at Frontenac should be bustling, but downtown often lacks oomph. Photo by David Winch

Sherbrooke struggles to establish an attractive, walkable central city

By David Winch

Local Journalism Initiative

The pop tune “Downtown” was a perky 1965 hit by Brit singer Petula Clark (ask your parents) that captured the allure of nighttime streets:

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty

How can you lose?

The lights are much brighter there

You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

So go downtown, things’ll be great when you’re

Downtown, no finer place for sure …

Clark evokes the fun of “movie shows” and “little places to go to” to forget all your troubles.

Sadly, that kind of city sparkle is missing in Sherbrooke — and has been for decades. Sure, there is some downtown life on Wellington St. North and King West, a good cineplex here or a nice Thai restaurant there, but overall, the area comes off as shabby and undistinguished. Red-brick industrial buildings and 1920s-vintage banks sit listlessly waiting for some purpose — anything.

“It’s just ugly”, said one dinner companion bluntly, speaking of central Sherbrooke.

To be fair to Wellington North, the main downtown street, walking around there on a sunny Saturday recently I noted the many restaurants, Asian-fusion, Lebanese, Iranian and Italian, the clothing boutiques, the excellent book and magazine outlets, and the Granada concert hall with its full slate of concerts. But somehow, this didn’t make for a bustling street scene. There was barely any bustle.

Longtime Townships residents recall nostalgically being drawn to the big Woolworth store on Wellington or to nearby Tony’s Pizzeria. But retailing has mostly moved to suburban outlets. The food court at the Carrefour de l’Estrie mall today matches the fast-food variety available in downtown Sherbrooke.

City of Sherbrooke’s revitalization plan for downtown focuses on six ‘quartiers’. Courtesy Ville de Sherbrooke

Plans to revitalize

As in cities throughout North America, Sherbrooke became progressively more suburbanized from the 1970s onward, with malls and autoroute-accessible restaurants, cinemas and shops dominating the retail trade.

Across Canada, a range of mid-sized cities resembling Sherbrooke – from Thunder Bay and Sudbury to Moncton and, in Quebec, Trois Rivières – also suffered the impact of declining industries: pulp and paper, forestry, mining, railroads and shipping and, in the Townships, the textile industry. This affected these cities’ dynamism.

A year ago, I wrote about my pleasant experience in Vermont’s capital (“Sherbrooke and Burlington: Twin cities?”, June 3, 2023). I enjoyed Burlington’s picturesque and walkable urban setting. A broad pedestrian mall straddles the downtown, the result of a push by key town councillors to follow examples in Europe, notably the Stroget in Copenhagen.

Can downtown Sherbrooke ever compete with that? Planners are aware of the stagnation issue. The “Mon Centro” revitalization plan posted on the city’s website “is the result of an initiative that began approximately 10 years ago, and culminated in 2015, with the adoption of the Downtown Sherbrooke Sustainable Development Master Plan (also known as Centre-ville 2020)”.

Its goal is ambitious: “The master plan aims to double the population living in the city’s downtown within the next 20 years, while greatly increasing availability of retail and office space” (for English summary, see www.sherbrooke.ca/en/major-projects/mon-centro ).

Pursuant to this plan, downtown Sherbrooke is now seeing “many large-scale projects materialize at the same time: construction of the Espace Centro project, redevelopment of a section of Galt Street West, moving the Grandes-Fourches Bridge … And that’s only the beginning!”

Sherbrooke planning chief Yves Tremblay is a believer; he lives downtown by the river on King. He says he can walk to everything, from the local Maxi to his work at city hall. He agrees there is “no magic formula” for downtown revitalization, especially when Internet is changing shopping habits so fast.

The rugged topography of Sherbrooke also affects its downtown. “Its geography is not linear; there are about six different ‘plateaux’,” which affect neighbourhood character. “Some streets such as rue Alexandre, stand out for their distinct local feel”, notes Tremblay.

Upgrades coming

Other experts in urban planning, however, stress that mid-sized cities don’t often have the downtown population or the geography to maintain a lively scene. The success of Burlington is a special case.

Planning specialist Pierre Filion of the University of Waterloo, for one, has studied dozens of mid-sized cities, ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 residents. He concludes they have to be “very lucky” to bring together all the plusses needed to revive a downtown. Filion also chronicled the “Eaton’s effect” that killed other Canadian downtowns – one department-store closing greatly reduces pedestrian traffic.

Among the successful mid-sized cities that Filion cites — standouts include Madison, Wisconsin, and Kingston, Ontario — there is often a built-in downtown population around a university campus, a major public employer such as a state or provincial capital, and geography that discourages sprawl. Madison’s centre, for example, is built on an isthmus squeezed between two lakes.

Sherbrooke has none of these advantages. And it never even had a downtown Eaton’s.

Today, you can see upgrades on Wellington St. South (until recently a headache for drivers): the broken pavement was replaced with brick and concrete squares, sidewalks have been widened, with planters installed for small trees, and parking made more convenient. Two new office towers of 6 and 10 stories anchor a young working population. Software developer Ubisoft and the school of digital arts (NAD) of the Université du Québec have already moved in. Trendy coffee outlets have followed.

In coming months, the city will adopt “intervention plans” for five more neighbourhoods, denoted as Galt; Alexandre; Marquette, Dufferin and, crucially for downtown life, Well Nord.

But, will these earnest revitalization efforts work?

Filion cautions: “All the elements have to be present for a downtown to be revitalized; above all, there have to be people living and working in the area”.

A tall order, for sure. But well worth it if locals can, some evening soon, like Petula, cheerfully head downtown.

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