I’m puzzled why, two days after a Radio-Canada report on changes and improvements made in the plans for the Royalmount project – hailed on this blog by indefatigable cheerleader Faiz Imam – CTV reports on a citizen initiative to push for more green space, affordable housing and more public transit. Are the Carbonleo promises not enough, or is there fear that they’re just smoke and mirrors?
Updates from August, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Montreal is one of Canada’s most diverse cities with over 25 different minority groups. The City is also known for its multicultural and multicultural architecture with over 200 architectural types represented.
For the past decade, the St-Jacques Farmers Market has become a mainstay in the city’s food scene and it even has its own restaurant (called “La Mardaise” in French!). The market is located in the French Quarter of the heart of Montreal.
On a rainy March morning, the market is packed with shoppers, families in tow and a whole crowd of enthusiastic music fans listening to musicians such as Béla Fleck, Dave Matthews Band, and Justin Bieber.
Montreal is a French Canadian city located in the northwest part of Quebec with a population of just under 5 million. The city, which was founded less than 100 years ago, has a population of approximately 6 million people and is located on the Pacific coast of Quebec.
Montreal is a wonderful city. A true cosmopolitan, a melting pot of a place. You see it all the time, if you are willing to go out for it. It’s like, you go across the street, one of your friends is there, you’re like, ‘what the hell is that and why the fuck do people do that?’ I’m not saying it’s the worst thing it ever was, but I can definitely say it’s a place that’s got a lot of different people, all doing very different things.”
“I think that’s a lot of it. But also, we were all really tired of playing for big clubs, and so we went into this really quiet, quiet place just on a whim. And we thought, ‘hey, that would be an interesting place for us to work if we had our own stage.'”
Riot grills: The next step for the Montreal trio is releasing their debut album, and how they’ll do so.
Listen to the interview with the trio below.
Montreal is in possession of the 3 points with nine games remaining. The top Eastern Conference team should have an edge. However, if the Leafs win the Cup, no team can stand in the way of them winning the whole thing. After all, if they take over the Maple Leafs with a win, they could clinch the Eastern Conference and the top seed in the East.
The Canadiens have the best two goalies in the world in Carey Price and Max Pacioretty so it is safe to say they will be able to get through this game without much trouble. Furthermore, the Canadiens can play their second line, a very good mix of offensive talent, that includes PK Subban and…
Montreal is on the other hand is on our short list. But we won’t be taking it on.
A lot of what the AI has to say about Montreal is gibberish about the Canadiens (much of it confused and out of date), and occasionally about the Impact. It never mentions the Alouettes. It sometimes talks about music and is prone to issuing rather dull lists of statistics.
Now time for a late lunch at La Mardaise!
Alex L
Haha, wow. Founded less than 100 years ago, home to 6 million people, and on the Pacific coast of Québec. I can’t wait to watch Justin Bieber sing at the St Jacques market.
EmilyG
Well, it seems that usually when I’m on Twitter, the name of at least one local hockey player is trending.
EmilyG
I think my favourite (and most nonsensical) thing is:
“The city, which was founded less than 100 years ago, has a population of approximately 6 million people and is located on the Pacific coast of Quebec.”Uatu
These sound like an oral presentation on Montreal from an eighth grader who had a week to prepare, but just wrote it up 5min before class
ant6n
“The comments on Montreal City Weblog are not the only evidence for this. For example, during the same visit, the Quebecer published two comments from members of “The Coalition of Canadian Liberal Party of Canada” about the state of the party. They, like the Montrealers, stated that the Liberals were a laughing stock in the country, which he attributed to the media. He also stated that the leadership race would be short, as the election would be held at a later date (and, in the latter case, in February), and pointed out the party leader’s absence (or not showing up) in Quebec City that week:
Finally, when the Quebecer published his profile of the new Trudeau, he posted a photo of Trudeau in a shirt (a green shirt) with a message reading: “Not my son but it’s a nice shirt.” The Quebecer would note that this shirt has actually circulated at Liberal gatherings. So is it also a shirt that the party does not wear?”
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Kate
One of the CAQ’s election promises was to reduce the number of councillors in Montreal. Now François Legault says they won’t be doing that after all.
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Kate
The Journal has the cricket field story but couldn’t they have found a less grim picture of Sue Montgomery?
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Kate
The botanical garden has installed an example of a filtering marsh in which natural plants are used to clean reject water from the gardens themselves. Seems the process is already in use at Jean‑Doré beach and the Biosphere. (Obviously this process has been at work for untold millions of years in nature, but it takes human beings to understand and re-create the thing to become news.)
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Kate
A bar in Hochelaga has seen its licence suspended for 40 days over many unruly incidents including fights, drug dealing, shots fired and alcohol served past closing time. The owner, Tong Li, is cited as saying she’ll stay open unless the police come and close her down. The Journal is at pains to note that Li spoke in “un anglais approximatif.”
Sounds like a fun place for a beer.
Dhomas
To be fair, this is not exclusive to traditionally poorer areas like HoMa. A few years ago, I was at a trendy bar in Old Montreal after a company Christmas party. Lots of people with seemingly lots of money. I went into the bathroom and saw a guy selling another guy some coke. As I exited, I saw the bouncer walking towards the bathroom. I was sure he was going to throw those guys out, but I didn’t give it much more thought. A little later, I went back to the bathroom only to see the same bouncer this time participating in the drug deal. Same place also allowed us to stay past closing time and continued serving alcohol. Looks like Chez Francoise’s worst crime was not paying off the right people.
Dominic
@Dhomas Oh no, I hope you were wearing your best pearls to clutch and almost faint!
MarcG
That doesn’t seem to have been his point at all – I guess we hear what we want to.
Dhomas
Seems like MarcG got my point. Dominic, not so much.
You don’t hear much reporting on these “higher class” spots, though they’re just as “guilty” of these “transgressions” as those in HoMa. And… I’ve used up my allocation of quotation marks for today.
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Kate
Air quality in the east end remains a problem, with residents saying not enough is being done to monitor pollutants and police the industries at that end of the island.
In another story, east-end residents are angry about the Sanimax plant, which renders dead animals and smells like it does.
I’m afraid the moral of the story is don’t live in the industrial parts of the east end.
ant6n 22:13 on 2019-08-24 Permalink
The Website by Carbonleo about this project starts with a giant aerial photo of the 15-40 interchange with the project area marked next to it, and follows with this text, which makes me feel like, just by reading it, that I’m joining whatever cult Faiz is part of:
“””Royalmount was born of a desire to create a unifying, eco-friendly and innovative living environment that reflects the best of Montreal.
Located in Town of Mount Royal (TMR) at the intersection of highways 15 and 40, this carbon-neutral neighbourhood will be a source of revitalization for one of Montreal’s largest heat islands. The mission of Royalmount village is to repair the crumbling infrastructure that has for decades geographically divided the cities and neighbourhoods on the western part of the island from the rest of the city. Rooted in today’s realities while answering the needs of tomorrow, Royalmount will have their residents’ well-being at the heart of its mission.
Challenging convention, it will be an inspiring urban cultural hub designed on a human scale. Royalmount will offer the quintessential Montreal experience: a dynamic, diverse culture with restaurants, boutiques, green spaces, hotels, lounge areas and offices, while at the same time embracing the best technological practices for the environment, sustainable development, and green mobility.”””
I don’t believe in private entities designing supposedly utopic mini-villages next to highways. At what point did we privatize urban development, and deeply steep it in shallow PR? (I guess some time before we privatized transit planning..)
These villages are basically arcologies, and in some sense descendants of developments like the brutalist Bonaventure building – a sort of mini-city within the city, that is unconcerned with whatever is surrounding it, because it’s basically a fortress (The Bonaventure is a literal one built with walls, the highway-interchange villages are less obvious ones, but must still protect their interior greenwashing spaces from the adjacent highways).
But to be fair, there’s a metro station a couple hundred meters away, so they do have that covered…
Douglas 06:45 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Carbonleo’s new proposal looks fine. They are just trying to please more people.
Once it is built, all the arguments against it will look hyperbolic. Like the end of the world is happening on decarie and 40.
A huge development project for Montreal which will bring in even more tax revenues to the city.
Pay for a lot of construction salaries which is good for montreal and quebec economy.
Everyone benefits to be honest.
Uatu 08:51 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
The more community input the better since they’re going to be living with the development daily and putting up with the mundane headaches that pr gloss over like garbage collection, delivery traffic, parking, road maintenance, groundskeeping,/snow removal etc. Also better to have carbon Leo plan the space better because DIX30’s layout is a haphazardly strewn out shitshow of buildings and roads that no one knows how to navigate. Parts of the DIX30 are dead and are going through reconstruction which means detours and traffic in an already confined space. Will Royal Mount be the same? Does it have the space to remake structures and layout without causing even more traffic to the area? Nobody thinks about these things because they’re too distracted by PR drawings and tax$$$. Just like people only later wonder why elevators are just now being installed in the metro….
Kevin 09:04 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Douglas
Just to point out the obvious: This development is not in Montreal and will provide no tax revenue to the city.
Uatu 09:08 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
That pr text also reads like someone fed “Royalmount is….” into that AI in the previous post
EmilyG 14:58 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
“Royalmount is a Montreal city and a condos. It will be built in 1999 in Eastern Mount Royal. Mount Royal is a mountain with a population of 3 million tourists every summer between January and March.”
(Me having a crack at writing in the style of an AI.”
Phil M 15:36 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Has anyone actually proposed anything better, that developers are willing to build? It seems the alternative is to let the area continue to deteriorate. And since it has been pointed out that the land is in TMR, and not Montreal, it begs the question what kind of urban planning resources TMR has at its disposal. From their point of view, it’s a win win win. If the Plateau gets to block cars from passing through it, it seems only fair that TMR fgets to redevelop a dying area.
Kate 22:37 on 2019-08-25 Permalink
Phil M, what exactly does “deteriorate” mean here?
I don’t think there have been counterproposals. But since Montreal has no say in what TMR does with this land, TMR can choose whatever developer they like. It’s not as if Montreal has a great recent track record to show off in creating new neighbourhoods: the public meetings held over Griffintown were a joke, and the redevelopment of the Children’s Hospital block showed us how developers get what they want. The city’s had no clout in insisting on the inclusion of social housing, let alone space for schools, libraries or other public facilities.
I can only hope Plante & Co. can keep more of an eye on what happens around the Molson brewery site when it comes to redevelopment.
ant6n 00:18 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
Well, if the city sells the whole Molson site as as whole to some billion dollar developer, we’ll get another mega-development (right next to the Radio Canada mega development). I don’t get why they can’t come up with a basic urban plan, subdivide the large site, maybe be imposing a human-scale street-grid, adding basic services, and then sell off the lots for each building individually, rezoned, including developer rights. It could create a somewhat more organic city (if that’s at all possible if so much is built at once), while optimizing for public rather than private concerns.
Kate 13:04 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
ant6n, you raise a good point: why the need to give a site to a single developer? We’d get more variety if it wasn’t being done this way.
Ephraim 13:10 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
Kevin, just to correct you, Mont-Royal pays 51.8 per cent of their tax into the agglomeration. So actually, Montreal gets the lion’s share of city taxes in TMR.
ant6n 22:47 on 2019-08-26 Permalink
Well the agglo isn’t just Montreal, and TMR must be getting something from that agglo pool as well, so TMR likely still gets the lion’s share. Id say it’s a pretty good deal for them having this development in what is essentially an exclave, most of the impact (and prob plenty of he cost) will be on Montreal
Faiz Imam 20:57 on 2019-08-28 Permalink
Looking back at my comment from the other post, I stand by most of what I said, though I do think I was a bit too joyous about it.
This new plans is better, but instead of an absolute catastrophe for the city its now in the “decent but flawed” realm along with any number of other projects around the city.
Is that worth celebrating? I think so, but I’m still in support of anyone who wants to keep pushing it to be even better, like any negotiation, any offer is less than they are ultimately willing to accept.