A piece of city land lying between Old Montreal and Griffintown (neither item has a map) will be turned into a vast real estate development including various promises for sustainable buildings, gardens, some kind of quasi-social housing and so on.
More on the plans Wednesday morning in the Gazette, still no map.
I’m going to make a cynical prediction. Despite all the talk about zero-waste markets, gardens, an orchard and social and family housing, when the project is finished it will consist of 3- and 4-room condos and nothing else, like every other development.
Acute Eye 23:10 on 2019-06-25 Permalink
From the description in the articles and the glimpse of Silo no. 5, seems to be right here : https://goo.gl/maps/9SBxvnHofPvLQ2xK9
Kate 07:19 on 2019-06-26 Permalink
Thank you.
David100 12:46 on 2019-06-26 Permalink
Looks like a cool project, but the city – with the typical utopian thinking and disregard to economics – doesn’t seem to understand that larding a project up with so many exigencies, including 20% social, and only allowing a total of 250 units on the site, means that the non-market units will necessarily be quite expensive, in order to make it all feasible. 200 market units puts the averag market unit cost at well over $600,000, not including taxes or fees. Cut away the plaza that’ll rarely be used, extend the tower’s envelope, abandon the luxury unit size requirement, and double the unit count. Any construction is better than nothing, but more units and few flamboyantly unnecessary additions/requirements that raise costs, that’s how you make the city more affordable.
Kate 12:53 on 2019-06-26 Permalink
Well yes, you could make the city technically more affordable by putting up towers of 2½s for entire families and jam them in, without any green space or services, but there has to be a balance. A lot of what’s being said lately is reactive to the mess the city made by handing over Griffintown to developers with no strings attached for things like parks, schools and community space. Let’s see if this thing even gets built.
david100 13:54 on 2019-06-26 Permalink
I’m remain convinced that someone in the city deliberately timed the publication/re-zoning and subsequent parkland purchases so as maximize city dollars going out, rather than minimize them. Paying 10x what they should have by purchasing land later in the process.
That said, I think the city strikes a good balance now. Probably the Faubourg des Récollets could use a park – Victoria Square is sterile and empty, the port is far away, and that center median on the road formerly known as the Bonaventure is nowhere to stroll, relax, chat, play croquet, picnic, etc) but, overall, I think the value of simply building more housing greatly outweighs any other civic consideration.
I’ve ranted on here intermittently but for quite some time about all the positive benefits of housing construction – lower rate of rent increase, consequent lower eviction rates, consequent reduction of gentrification, more retail stability on larger customer bases, and a lot more. Two important things worth noting with this site in particular though: it’s terra nulius, nobody to evict, no whining neighbors complaining about neighborhood character or too many people or shadows on the vegetable garden or any of that nonsense, so it should be built to the max; and the unit mix here is aspirational, the city’s fantasy that there’s some market for $750,000 three bedroom apartments in that location that includes families is absurd. That unit will end up a foreigner’s investment sitting empty, a rich person’s pied-à-terre, a high end apartment for a couple, a high end roomates situation, or a high end airbnb unit.
I mean, by all means, the developer should build the units if she/he sees a space in the market for them, but the city requiring that, especially when we know that the city doesn’t have a scintilla of knowledge about real estate, it’s just ramping up costs, which nixes the primary public benefit of more housing construction.
david100 13:57 on 2019-06-26 Permalink
And I’ll add that you need to build for the high end, the foreign investors, etc. or else they’ll just buy up the older stock that we want to stay cheaper, but the market right now is very good at building for them (see Overdale, the Bell Center area, Cabot Square area, and a lot more).
I’m saying that the city shouldn’t be going into this market too.