Café Cléopâtre, rear entrance, June 10, 2012 by giga_gurl

Café Cléopâtre has been at the centre of a long controversy concerning urban renewal and the preservation of Montréal's architectural and cultural heritage. In 2008 a developer began buying the properties on Boulevard Saint-Laurent between Sante-Catherine and the Monument National at the corner of René Lévesque, all of which are situated within The Main National Historic Site. The owner of Café Cléopâtre did not want to sell and eventually went to court to fight an expropriation order from the Ville de Montréal. Simultaneously preservationists such as Phyllis Lambert of the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Dinu Bumbaru of Heritage Montréal joined the battle to save The Lower Main. Sadly it seems as if these significant buildings will soon be demolished; however, the owner of Café Cléopâtre recently won the right to keep his building.