Facebook Group Wants to Revive Fabled Ninth Floor Restaurant in Downtown Montreal

A new Facebook group wants to rally support to revive the former Eaton's Ninth Floor restaurant (known to many as The Ninth Floor or simply Le 9e) in time for Montreal's 375th anniversary in 2017. The art deco gem was closed to the public in 1999, after 68 years of service. The year before a documentary, Les dames du 9e étage, chronicled the lives of the women who worked at the restaurant for decades. The group's administrators indicate that the site (now Complexe Les Ailes) is listed as a heritage landmark but is now endangered, with scant evidence from owner Ivanhoé Cambridge, the asset management arm of the Caisse de dépôt et placement, the province’s powerful pension-fund manager, that it will be restored.

In an email to The Globe and Mail last year, Claude Sirois, co-chief operating officer at Ivanhoé Cambridge, wrote: "We recognize our collective responsibility to celebrate the history and heritage of the [Ninth Floor restaurant] but we also have a responsibility towards our investors. Several scenarios have been studied. We are still looking for an operating partner who shares our business objectives as well as its preservation." A recent request by Eater Montreal to visit and photograph the Ninth Floor restaurant was rebuffed by Ivanhoé Cambridge.