Park Ex and how fast it’s changing

As the new Université de Montréal campus prepares to open, residents of Park Extension are worried about its proximity and how this will change their traditionally modest, ethnic enclave. The article is a little odd, giving a lot of brief glimpses of how things are changing and how rents are zooming, but the journalist clearly talked to a lot of people and didn’t just interview one or two “spokespeople” as is more usual.

As a footnote: the article says the campus is nearly ready, but I went to check it out last week, from the Outremont side, and man. It’s impossible to get close enough to photograph much, as everything is fenced off and there are still a lot of massive excavationary holes that don’t look like there’s any chance a functioning building will be standing there come September. There are a couple of big glass boxes – the one on the right, above, was actually hard to fix the eyes on, the glass looking like it was in two places at once, and exactly mirroring the sky – but not much else, and nothing like roads or sidewalks yet that I could see.