Bay may seek compensation for city core closure

Hudson's Bay Co. said Monday it may seek compensation from the City of Montreal for lostbusiness while a subway line and seven-block area of downtown was closed on the weekend.

The Bay department store, along with numerous smaller businesses, lost money while the city investigated and shored up the ceiling of a pedestrian tunnel that was at risk of collapsing between the McGill metro station and the Bay.

The Bay maintains thatdamage to the tunnel was caused by city workers building a new bicycle lane on de Maisonneuve Boulevard.

"A very proactive team of engineers and external consultants regularly review the store. In fact, it was just recently that they were reviewing the slab in question, and they saw no cracks," said Bay spokeswoman Hillary Marshall.

Bay engineers think the city workers caused the damage, Marshall said.

The city official responsible for infrastructure, Yves Prevost, said it's too early to talk about causes and blame.

"This will be looked [at] after we have all the results of expertise, which is not the case now. So this question hasn't been discussed for now. The first thing, we had to secure the slab, which was done," Prevost said.

He added that private businesses are responsible for their own buildings, and that the city is creating a registry of public and private properties.

Montreal Mayor Grald Tremblay said Monday the registry will include information oninspectionsdone in privately owned businesses.

"We're assuming they do that on a regular basis. But we have never had formally all that information now we will make sure we have access to all that information.

"As you've seen on the weekend, even though it's a private-sector infrastructure, we have to do all the work, because it has an impact on the public sector. It has an impact on public transit," Tremblay said.

The subway was back running Monday morning, and most streets were reopened, but there is a section of de Maisonneuve Boulevard between Aylmer Street and Union Avenue that may be closed for some time while repairs are made, city officials said.