Royalmount through various lenses
The wording used about Valérie Plante’s attitude to the Royalmount project varies. Radio-Canada says she thinks the project must be revised and TVA’s headline says something similar while CTV emphasizes that the mayor hopes to hammer out differences with the developer and Global simply says the project faces a setback. Christopher Curtis in the Gazette brings nuance to the story, but traffic problems and longer commutes for drivers are still front and centre in the Gazette’s view, rather than the overall damage such a project risks bringing to the urban fabric.
david100 08:01 on 2019-01-27 Permalink
Can she stop it really?
Kate 09:38 on 2019-01-27 Permalink
Yes, she can. She has leverage through the agglomeration council and can appeal to Quebec to enforce the PMAD, and she could deny infrastructure support for the project. TMR can trumpet that it’s their land and they can do what they like, but it’s not on a different planet. There’s no reason a town of 22,000 people should carry out a project that will damage the surrounding city for generations.
Whether it would be politically advisable for Plante to act – that’s another issue.
Bill Binns 12:11 on 2019-01-27 Permalink
I don’t care too much about this mall one way or the other but I have seen so many dead and dying malls across the US that I’m surprised anyone can put the funding together to build one anymore. Maybe there is something different going on Quebec that makes malls a safer bet? Carrefour seems particularly healthy. I haven’t been to Rockland in years but it’s still around afaik. The burbs are full of the type of big box anchored strip malls that are dying at an alarming rate elsewhere (just yesterday I saw an old Best Buy in Florida that is now a church). I wonder if Quebec has a lower rate of engagement with the internet linked to our appalling literacy rate and that one symptom of this is that brick and mortar retail will hang on a little longer.
mare 12:20 on 2019-01-27 Permalink
If this project goes through it’s maybe time for some old fashioned action like chaining yourself to trees and diggers. Can millenniums be bothered to do such things anymore? The opposition against tuition hikes was successful in swaying public opinion and, after elections, politics.
However this is an issue that’s not causing immediate personal financial loss; can it move people into action to protest? I think it’s a pretty important issue, but everybody in Quebec seems rather blasé about other big bad things that happened or are happening in Montreal and Quebec, like the REM and the “reforms” in healthcare and education. Have we given up? Okay, maybe the reality of climate change makes this all moot in the next decade of two, so why bother now.
Blork 14:43 on 2019-01-27 Permalink
@Bill Binns, this isn’t a “mall,” it’s a “lifestyle center.” Malls are indeed dying, but lifestyle centers and going gangbusters all over. Dix-30, for example, is doing really well. It is most def no a “mall.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_center
(I’m not endorsing it; just pointing out that it’s not a “mall.”)