Montreal City Weblog

Kate 11:17 on 2019-07-30 Permalink Reply  

• Ginger Baker 12:37 on 2019-07-30 Permalink

  Odd they didn’t mention the super secret space laser being retrofitted into the dome of the Oratory…

  Typical liberal media!

• Tim F 18:47 on 2019-07-30 Permalink

  I’d have thought the REM would come before the Bellechasse centre.

• Faiz Imam 20:09 on 2019-07-30 Permalink

  I believe the framing of the article is specifically projects that have been launched in 2019. Rem started last year.

  Anyways. I was interested to read that the royal mount folks need to present amendments by this fall. Good to know there is still room to make the project less horrible.

  I expect they’ll add some amount of residential, which will be great. The more the better. But what would really be helpful would be key social infrastructure. Community centers, schools, athletics stuff that isn’t a private gyms,etc.

  Basically, anything they can do to make it more than a glorified luxury shopping mall would be great.

• Ant6n 23:10 on 2019-07-30 Permalink

  It takes a special kind of reality distortion field to take a shit project, add the unrealistic hope for some, any improvements, and start praising that same shit project based on that wishful thinking already. I guess it’s a kind of subtle pro-developer shilling/PR (are they paying you yet or are you still doing this work for free).

• dwgs 07:05 on 2019-07-31 Permalink

  Always the ad hominem…

• Kate 09:27 on 2019-07-31 Permalink

  To be fair, dwgs, Faiz Imam has a proven track record of wanting to believe the very best of any development, be it the REM or something like Royalmount.

  Faiz Imam, I have seen zero indication that Carbonleo is community-minded, nor that they are likely to welcome amendments of the type you describe. Carbonleo has one interest: a buck. Anything they concede will have to be forced on them by the city.

• ant6n 10:42 on 2019-07-31 Permalink

  @dwgs
  Okay fine, let’s put it another way: It’s ridiculous to claim that the Royalmount is the addition of an apartment unit away from being a great project.

• Faiz Imam 11:33 on 2019-07-31 Permalink

  Dude, as usual you misrepresent me and take the least charitable interpretation of my words.

  I literally said “there is room to make it less horrible”

  Which is my way of saying the project sucks but there might be ways to put lipstick on the pig.

  Then I make an additional point of what could be added to actually make it good.

  In hindsight, I should have had a last line that said “but honestly given the owners, no way any real improvements will happen’

  That might have made my position more clear.

  Kate: I totally agree with you that the bottom line is the only line. But as we are seeing with the condo boom city wide, as well as the death of physical retail and many forms of shopping, it’s totally not Clear that the best money is in a classical shopping mall.

  If you follow global retail development trends, the pattern is clearly towards mega projects with mixed use faux downtowns with a ton of luxury residential next to luxury retail and experiences.

  The solar uniquartier in Brossard for example exemplifies this larger trend. And old suburbs all over North America are seeing a ton of them pop up.

  My point is that Royalmount is the weird one here. They might be leaving a ton of money on the table by not having a strong residential component.

  Also, note that residental doesn’t mean good. As you say we should not expect any sort of social infrastructure.

  My expectation is that we will get griffintown 2.0. That’s probably the best we can hope for and I’ll be glad if that happens as opposed to the nonsense planned at the moment.