Sunday is Museum Day with free access and special events at many of the city’s museums and dedicated bus shuttles.
Updates from May, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Saturday is the Fête du croissant: the site lets you search (a little rockily) for the nearest outlet selling them for a buck.
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Kate
A new fountain has been added to the northern part of Dorchester Square.
Max
I was checking it out today and the new part of the square looks fabulous. Just needs a little cleanup, the last few benches installed and the fencing taken away. I thought the passerelles were kind of goofy at first but now I can’t wait to plant my ass on ’em and take it all in. Big, big props to all the folks at Cormier. They really saved the best part for last.
Faiz Imam
I was a fan of the bridges from the first moment I saw them. I can see why it seems superfluous. But they really do a good job to disconnect the exits to the parking garage from the pedestrian sphere.
I had to navigate that corner daily for years. These bridges are so much nicer, as well as offering a unique view that people never got before.
Kate
I’m going to go have a look soon – maybe even today.
Kate
Had a look today, but the area is still fenced off and work’s still going on, on the steps and the fountain.
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Kate
Developers seem intent on building ever higher condo towers, the latest being a 61-floor box planned for Phillips Square.
EmilyG
“L’utilisation de ces espaces pour la location Airbnb sera interdite.”
I am glad to hear that.Faiz Imam
At least the main podium seems well dimentionned to fit in with the rest of the block. Urban design 101, but even that seems lacking these days.
Nothing special about it, not offensive, but not great. I wonder how bad it will be for shading and sunlight?
Kate
Yes, at least it has some setback from the street. I don’t know whether our laws mandate those, as Manhattan’s do, but it makes things more tolerable at street level.
david100
This project will do a lot to bring people into that area at night, which is good.
On the question of Airbnb, it seems to me that it’s a bad thing that they’re not allowed here. A part of my plan would be to restrict Airbnb only to newew construction, with a trailing ban of 15-20 years, so that you could use short term rental for a certain number of years and then it would be permanently folded into the regular rental market. This sort of move, similar to rent control rules in other jurisdictions, would incentivize construction of new units that would eventually become permanent local rental stock, while keeping a steady supply of short term rental available, keep the pressure on to build, etc.
CE
@david100 Why not just build a hotel so it can be regulated and taxed under existing structures?
david100
Build hotels too. The idea is that we should be encouraging housing construction as much as possible, and that for new construction (in some areas) we should be allowing short term rental to draw in investor dollars to get the buildings up. Housing as an investment vehicle is stupid and wasteful – people should be investing in productive segments of the economy, in entrepreneurship, technology, etc. not in betting on speculators’ moves or housing scarcity. Literally, the model in the Canada is to count on a housing shortage or a bubble so that the cost of housing continues to increase. This at the expense of productive investments that would grow the national wealth.
If we allow short term rentals and restrict them to new build construction (in some areas), we’ll get investors to fund new construction of rental units by allowing them to invest in single unit hotel rooms over a period of time. The net result may be to eat the hotels’ lunch somewhat, which would suck in many ways, but the consequence would be that every new hotel room created in this way had only a limited number of years on that market before it transitioned to regular housing. The more short term rental units are built, the more rental units come on the market in 15 or whatever years. And the income from those units gets developers over the financing hump on condo projects, leading to more construction overall.
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Kate
Radio-Canada has a good report on a dubious plan to put up a luxury hotel complex in Griffintown on federal land initially leased years ago by a man who simply promised to put up a cultural centre for the Czech community. The hotel plan would almost inevitably involve blocking public access to the canal and boosting traffic in the area, the city doesn’t like it, and this is not the first time the plan has been reported in the media (La Presse, last October). But greed may well win out.
Raymond Lutz
Pfff… l’élection de Valérie Plante nous avait insufflé (le petit monde ordinaire, locataires, prolétaires) une puff d’espoir. Ça n’a pas duré… comme avec Obama [1] (perso, je n’ai jamais mordu à l’hameçon Trudeau fils, donc pas déçu par l’annonce des “Sunny Ways”).
When will we see here in Montreal special dedicated entrances for poor people designed into those upscale residential projects, as they start to appear in London? [2]
“So here Doctorow shows us a screengrab of one of the most brutal aspects of Neoliberalism’s heart of darkness: the will to humiliate, the will to impose the very shittiest of conditions on whomever it can. Free markets is a euphemism for fuck you.”
Cet aphorisme est tiré de ‘Who Says Violence Doesn’t Solve Anything?’ A Review of Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment [3].
PS: my html anchors didn’t pass, so here they are:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3-FFcCUMGk ;
[2] https://boingboing.net/2019/05/23/neovictorian-dickens-larpers.html ;
[3] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/05/who-says-violence-doesnt-solve-anything-a-review-of-radicalized-four-tales-of-our-present-moment-by-cory-doctorow.html
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Kate
Radio-Canada has a peek at the state of things at Beaudry station, closed since last fall for an overhaul. It’s meant to reopen soon but the report suggests the work is not complete. Similar on CBC, different photos.
Faiz Imam
Good choice. Better to have it open and look like a construction site than to close it down just to make a good impression.
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