The entrance to Old Quebec by the Palais coast will have a better mine in 2026 due to the development of the new Namur square, which will start next week.
Mayor Bruno Marchand made this announcement, which coincides with the visit of a delegation of 38 members of the city of Namur, in Belgium, Tuesday at the Quebec City Hall.
The two cities have been united by a collaboration and twinning protocol for over 25 years and this project has been in the boxes for some time.
Maxime Prévot, bourgmestre prevented from Namur, Anne Barzin, first alderman of Namur, and Bruno Marchand, mayor of Quebec.
Photo Stevens LeBlanc
The site, which represents an expenditure of $ 886,000, will continue until November 2025 at the crossroads of the Saint-Nicolas streets, the Vales-du-Roi and the Côte de la Potasse.
“We want to make it a friendly, safe place, where people finally stop, where people take the time to celebrate our respective stories,” said Marchand.
886 000$
The planting of plants will then take place in the spring of 2026. Traffic will be maintained during the work.
The same admission of the mayor, it is a place which, until now, “did not look like a look [et] was not distinctive in any way ”.
Sketch provided by Quebec City
The new development will include widened sidewalks, secure intersections, adding benches, planting at least three trees and the installation of public art works.
The sculpture Confluenceof Quebec artist Danielle April, will evoke the similarities between Namur and Quebec, who both have the specificity of being French -speaking and fortified regional capitals, developed at the confluence of a river and a river.
The work of public art “Confluence” by Danielle April.
Supplied by Quebec City
An interpretation module will also be installed to underline the 40e Anniversary of the recognition of Old Quebec as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He will include a copy of the work The Hure du Grognonwhich is considered, in Namur, as the oldest work of art in the municipal collection.
Cooperation
“The Place de Namur in Quebec has also echoed in the Place de Québec that we have been in Namur for a few years now, which is in the heart of our [secteur] pedestrian, ”said Anne Barzin, first alderman of Namur.
The two cities cooperate in particular in the fields of sustainable development, social cohesion, public security and culture.
“This is one of the great twinnings we have, not to say one of the two or three [jumelages] The most important and the most precious, ”said Mr. Marchand.
Maxime Prévot, who is mayor (bourgmestre) of this French -speaking city in Belgium, but whose municipal functions are currently suspended, since he is Minister of Foreign Affairs in his country, was also present.
“It is indeed important more than ever, certainly at a time when at the international level is all a little shaken, to recall the importance of links. They are essential. We talk too regularly about the accumulation of goods and too little about the accumulation of links, “he said.
Reaction
Claude Villeneuve, the chief of the municipal opposition in Quebec, praised this new development, but stressed that he was arriving with a little late.
“Hoping that this development can go round. We remember that it is a sector that will be under high pressure in the coming years, ”he argued, referring to the move of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital to the new hospital-jesus hospital complex.
