Carrefour Industrielle Alliance

The Simpson Building was built in 1929 as an Art-Deco style store and was, until its closing, an important witness to the commercial vitality of Ste-Catherine Street. In 1997, in order to exploit the real estate potential of this building that had been abandoned for several years, the Industrial-Alliance Insurance Company undertook to give it a new vocation by transforming it into a multi-use shopping centre, bringing together, on more than 210,000 square feet, a department store on the ground floor, a movie complex with 13 projection rooms on the upper floors and food concessions in the basement.

The transformation of the building proved to be a major project, for which many technical challenges were met: acoustic separation of spaces, increase in structural spans, increase in population (more than 4,300 people) and, consequently, complete reorganization of the vertical circulation and exit stairs.

Completed in 1999, the project to transform the former Simpson's store into Carrefour Industrielle Alliance successfully marks the renewal of Montreal's most important commercial artery, Ste-Catherine Street.