In the final days before Empire's downtown opening in late October, Phil Grisé takes the call from the construction site. In the background: power tools, counters being installed, his team merchandising three floors of retail space. The highly anticipated in-house café project with Laurent Dagenais, Maison BaultBerri, is running a bit behind—wood milling complications, the usual delays—but Phil's calm about it. He's been planning this for a year and a half.

What Grisé is pulling off is either brilliant or reckless, depending on who you ask: opening what's likely the biggest skate and snowboard shop in the world in a building where Archambault, a 127-year-old Quebec cultural institution, cited "evolution of consumer habits" and a deteriorating neighbourhood as reasons they had to leave.

In the final days before Empire's downtown opening in late October, Phil Grisé takes the call from the construction site. In the background: power tools, counters being installed, his team merchandising three floors of retail space. The highly anticipated in-house café project with Laurent Dagenais, Maison BaultBerri, is running a bit behind—wood milling complications, the usual delays—but Phil's calm about it. He's been planning this for a year and a half.

What Grisé is pulling off is either brilliant or reckless, depending on who you ask: opening what's likely the biggest skate and snowboard shop in the world in a building where Archambault, a 127-year-old Quebec cultural institution, cited "evolution of consumer habits" and a deteriorating neighbourhood as reasons they had to leave.