The Société de Développement de Montréal possessed land holdings dating back to the Doré administration's failed Quartier des Récluses initiative, in which lands were bought by the SIMPA to make way for the project. In exchange for handing this over, the SDM gained a minority stake in a joint venture with the real estate arms of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and the FTQ Fonds de Solidarité to fund the construction of the Cité, which occurred in eight phases, with additional phases having been planned. The Parti Québécois Bouchard Government of Québec then gave payroll tax credits to employers for moving to the new Cité du Multimédia buildings.
After the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and the elimination of tax incentives for information technology jobs in the district by the Liberal government of Jean Charest in 2003, phase 9 and others were cancelled, and the structures were sold by the joint venture to the private sector.
