Industry shuns Montreal for new installations
Molson is the case in point, but André Dubuc says here that industry is generally shunning Montreal for off-island locations when building new installations. Dubuc says too much of the available land in town is already contaminated by industry, which means high expense even before construction can begin.
Blork 12:59 on 2018-12-16 Permalink
This should come as a surprise to no one. Pretty much all of the “successful” top-tier cities of North America have lost their industrial zones. Who ever heard of someone building a new factory in Manhattan or Chicago? Land away from the city center is always less expensive, and in Montreal we have the added problem of living on an island, so there’s a built-in bottleneck problem getting goods in and out of the city.
The article makes an interesting note about densification too, saying that with increased densification (particularly among the middle classes — my note) there is more demand for parks and other shared public spaces. I’m not convinced that’s a valid argument though, as the density is mostly in the very inner areas like the Plateau, Mile End, Griffintown, etc., and nobody will every build factories there. The bits of available space on the island tend to be on the edges, as far as I can tell, closer to areas that are less dense and where the demand for public spaces is inherently lower.
CE 14:41 on 2018-12-16 Permalink
I work in the industry and it’s a little distressing how few production breweries there are on-island (production breweries as in breweries that make beer to be sold off-site). Go to any dep and most of the Quebec beers you’ll find are made outside of Montreal. There are lots of brewpubs but from the perspective of jobs, this is very different as it’s much more specialized and fewer employees are needed. A big mistake we made was converting almost all out industrial buildings to offices and condos. As someone who doesn’t want to work in an office, it gets a bit harder to think of a life in Montreal if all our industrial jobs move to industrial parks off-island to make room for tech companies and condos.
DeWolf 20:23 on 2018-12-16 Permalink
Brewing is one example of why it’s so important to preserve industrial areas in the centre of town. Vancouver has a number of light industrial areas in the heart of the city and over the past five or six years they have become a haven for a wave of small breweries that have really invigorated the city’s beer scene. The same thing is finally starting to happen in Montreal, but the scale is more modest, and as CE noted the Quebec brewing scene is really spread out through various small towns in the regions.
Kevin 23:08 on 2018-12-16 Permalink
But even Vancouver wasn’t big enough and cheap enough for the grandaddy of craft brewing: Granville Island Brewery.
They started in Vancouver in the ’80s and just over a decade later had moved their production to Kelowna- which would be like Molson moving to Granby.
DeWolf 13:58 on 2018-12-17 Permalink
That’s only because Granville Island stopped being a craft brewer. Their production was moved to Kelowna after they were bought by Molson. In fact, their “craft” line of experimental/specialty beers continues to be brewed on the island.
Dense cities are no longer equipped for giant, modern industrial operations, but they are perfectly suited for more grassroots, artisanal industries, which (as craft beer shows) can collectively provide just as much employment and economic benefits as a single huge operation. And they have the benefit of being locally-rooted so profits aren’t being sent offshore.
Kevin 20:35 on 2018-12-17 Permalink
They stopped being a microbrewer when the Kelowna expansion happened, and that occurred because Andrew Peller bought a chunk of the business in 1990 or so. Molson (under the Creemore Springs brand) only acquired Granville 20 years later.
My first job in Vancouver in 1997 was on Granville Island and I went to the brewery very often.