Look inside the workshop where Montreal's street furniture is made

Tucked between residential buildings, the one-storey warehouse in Montreal's eastern Mercier–Hochelaga–Maisonneuve borough wouldn't turn any heads.

But inside are the fixtures familiar to any Montrealer who spends time in the city's outdoor public spaces.

On high shelves sits wood that will be used for summer stages. Inflatable screens for movie nights in the park are piled together. Basketball hoops and yellow disc golf nets are gathered in boxes. Oversized chess pieces are scattered around; a white bishop stands a metre tall near a pile of deflated blue waterslides.

And soon, Montreal's colourful public pianos will join them.

"We are a bit undercover," says Martin Mousseau, responsible for technical services and logistical support of installations in the borough. It's his team that springs into action to fill public spaces with oddities and activities each summer.

"Nothing is appearing there like magic."

The warehouse and workshop, sometimes known as Entrepôt Chauveau, has been in business for decades — with supervising manager Éric Godcharles working there for the last 30 years.

Owned by the City of Montreal and managed by Mercier–Hochelaga–Maisonneuve, any borough can rent equipment or commission the warehouse and workshop to build something. But even among city employees, Entrepôt Chauveau's existence isn't widely known, says Godcharles.

The team is currently focusing on the colder seasons. They're painting the white boards that go around outdoor hockey rinks. And they're gathering items for Halloween, like homemade tombstones.

"What is really incredible here is we are here for, well, for people having fun, for kids," said Mousseau.

But he also points to more serious times of need when they've stepped in, like providing large white tents for day centres in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How does it work?

Boroughs, not individual citizens, can rent or buy materials from the warehouse.

Godcharles and Mousseau estimate boroughs they work with source 10 to 30 per cent of their items for parks and pedestrianized streets from Entrepôt Chauveau, though it depends on the year.

For example, the Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie got mobile wooden furniture, new garden boxes, Adirondack chairs, picnic tables and benches from the Chauveau team this summer, said a borough spokesperson.

"The work is done here and the painting is done here also," said Godcharles. "If they ask us to put varnish, we'll varnish it. If they ask for paint, we'll paint it. So it's like whatever they want we create."

Mousseau and Godcharles bill themselves as a cheaper, eco-friendly public service option to decorate the streets, which directs borough spending within the city rather than to a large online retailer.

But awareness remains an issue, something Godcharles says is due to turnover in municipal staff.

"Every day, we get calls [saying] "OK, I didn't know that we could get this service,'" he said. "So that's a little problem that we're facing right now."

Mousseau says they hold an open house once or twice a year to help with visibility.

'What are we going to do with all this?'

More than a dozen blocks of Ste-Catherine Street E. in The Village are currently filled with planters, chairs, benches and art.

SDC du Village, the non-profit association which manages the project, is tasked with storing everything when the street reopens to cars next month.

"It's an extra load when you create a project to have to think, what are we going to do with all this?" said SDC du Village executive director Gabrielle Rondy.

There's some storage space in the SDC's building, and they rent warehouse space on Montreal's South Shore. She says she didn't know rentals through the Chauveau team was an option.

"I was pretty surprised to learn about this," said Rondy. "We're trying to, of course, save money every year, save the planet a little bit more. So we're trying to not not build anything that's not necessary."

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A spokesperson for the City of Montreal said it's up to boroughs to determine what goes in its streets and parks, and that the borough would need to make a request directly to the Chauveau team.

The spokesperson stressed the warehouse is more for creation than storage, adding there's an internal catalogue available to boroughs to see what is available.