Aaron Derfel is doing a two-parter in the Gazette this week about the growing toleration of private clinics in an MUHC-owned building.
Updates from May, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Weather prediction for the whole summer: rainy and cool. Those of us with northern European genes will feel right at home; everyone else, not so much.
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Kate
Several tenants’ groups have written an open letter to Quebec about the damage being done to neighbourhoods and to the stock of rental housing by Airbnb.
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Kate
The Journal is alleging that the city is fudging over a promise to give a minimum $15/hour wage to all its employees. Fact seems to be that most city workers make more than this anyway, except for seasonal workers in parks.
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Kate
A man who was trying to stop a holdup in St-Michel was shot near bar-closing time and was taken to hospital. Sounds like the perpetrators got away but it’s not made clear whether they were successful in carrying out the intended restaurant robbery.
The only other police blotter item I find Monday is tha shots were fired in Anjou Sunday evening, but nobody’s turned up as either victim or shooter.
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Kate
A demonstration was held Sunday afternoon here in support of U.S. abortion rights, recently assailed by new laws in some southern states. A few Canadian politicians, including a 21‑year‑old Ontario MPP, have also spoken out recently about their hopes to make abortion illegal in Canada again.
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Kate
The Gazette’s “through our eyes” feature this week looked back at the Great Antonio pulling a bus and the 1986 Stanley Cup riot among others. Despite the wreckage shown on Ste‑Catherine Street that night in May 1986, the paper reports there were only six arrests.
The Centre d’histoire piece looks back to the 1958 opening of the Voie Camillien-Houde by largely forgotten city mayor Sarto Fournier. The writer notes the irony of the name, given that Houde himself had promised that motor traffic would go over the mountain “over his dead body.”
I know I’ve grinched before about not really ever having grasped the point of a bed-in, but there are reports this week on the 50th anniversary Sunday of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel bed-in by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The anniversary is accompanied by an exhibit at the Phi Centre. I happened past the other day and went in, and can tell you: don’t make a special trip.
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Kate
Now we’re getting traffic warnings for specific days on the weekend, the Gazette warning here about Sunday problems.
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Kate
Stephen Bronfman wants a roofless toy stadium for his toy baseball team.
Update: Monday, a Radio-Canada critic writes at length about why a roofless stadium is a bad idea in this climate, and with climate in general becoming more unpredictable. But Martin Leclerc misses the elephant in the room. Developers want stadiums because of the money it allows them to extort from the public purse. The existence of a team and actual matches is not the point at all.
Jay
Allez nos amours!!!
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Kate
Can a fictional team really be someone’s “amours”?
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Kate
Took a Toronto Star writer to do a feature about the fatal effects of heat waves in Montreal with a special focus on urban geography. A striking point is how the fence between TMR and Park Ex shows the line between a leafy, expensive suburb with air conditioned houses, vs. a nearly treeless built-up neighbourhood with small apartments and little air conditioning, so much more dangerous in a heat wave.
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Kate
The old incinerator in Rosemont was on fire Saturday evening, which started with a suspect fire in two city vehicles parked near the building. Item notes the building also had a fire three years ago.
On Facebook, regular blog reader Blork singled out a line in the CBC report for mockery: “The building […] is in an industrial zone, reasonably far from residential areas.” Blork says: ‘Reasonably far from residential areas? There are condo buildings literally right across the street!”
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Kate
Sunday is Museum Day with free access and special events at many of the city’s museums and dedicated bus shuttles.
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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.
jeather 11:26 on 2019-05-27 Permalink
I am not pro-private clinics but these are doctors who bill medicare (not patients directly) and give you the option to have blood tests done in a for-pay private clinic in the same building or on medicare in the hospital, which doesn’t feel like the end of medicare as we know it.
Su 08:41 on 2019-05-28 Permalink
More details in today’s paper !https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/how-the-muhc-gambled-and-lost-millions-on-a-real-estate-sinkhole
jeather 09:15 on 2019-05-28 Permalink
Aha, here’s the relevant issue:
SMD 12:09 on 2019-05-28 Permalink
Yup. Also:
jeather 12:54 on 2019-05-28 Permalink
I guess but aren’t most people’s doctors lacking a dedicated ombudsperson? I’ve never looked into the complaints process.
Uatu 16:21 on 2019-05-28 Permalink
Also note the sneaky, weaslly way they opened those clinics, especially the children’s one where parents were unaware that it was private and were charged for stuff that should’ve been free. I don’t know why there’s a new hospital when everything is moving into a new building. The MUHC management are a bunch of corrupt weasels who’ll violate the Canadian health act just to bail themselves out of their inept financial mismanagement. And we all pay for it in the end.