OCPM: More social housing, less commerce
A report is out Thursday on the form to be taken by the new neighbourhoods to grow up on the site of the Molson brewery and the old Maison Radio-Canada. The OCPM wants less space for businesses, more social housing, fewer motor vehicles and more space for pedestrians and cyclists.
DeWolf 12:46 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
The OCPM clearly means well but it often makes recommendations that will have unintended consequences down the road. Restricting the amount of commercial space in a high-density neighbourhood is a good way to ensure you’re building car-dependent bedroom communities right in the heart of the city. That’s especially true given the relatively isolated location of the brewery lands.
There needs to be room for dépanneurs, supermarkets, fruiteries, fishmongers, cafés, restaurants, pet supply stores, veterinarians, pharmacies, bike repair shops. If you don’t allow developers to provide enough spaces for a full spectrum of neighbourhood shops, you’ll end up with a handful of banks, a corporate chain supermarket, maybe a Couche-Tard if you’re lucky. Independent businesses won’t be able to afford the rents when supply is so tightly restricted. Imagine a used bookstore opening in a neighbourhood where there is just half a dozen high-priced retail spaces.
We already have plenty of examples of what happens when you don’t integrate enough commercial space into new developments. The Faubourg Québec just east of Old Montreal is very densely populated, but it doesn’t have a single retail space and is completely lifeless as a result. Eliminating commercial activity certainly doesn’t seem to have helped the businesses in Old Montreal, either, because they’re beyond the 10-minute walking distance that most people are willing to tolerate for running daily errands. There still isn’t a supermarket in the entire area.
The Angus Yards development is another example. Again, there is not a single commercial space in any of the residential areas. All of the retail activity is clustered in one small area on the edge of the development. There’s a giant Provigo, an SAQ and some cafés and restaurants, but it’s generally quite car-oriented even though the nearby residential areas are fairly dense. Bois Franc suffers from the same problem. It’s filled with dense housing, but there’s hardly any commercial space, except for a little cluster filled with chain stores.
Back in the early 1980s, Montreal was also suffering from very high commercial vacancy rates and the same idea of restricting the supply was floated. The city actually wanted to rezone St-Viateur as a residential street, so that any empty retail spaces would need to be converted into housing units. Luckily there was enough opposition from the neighbourhood that they backed off. But you can still see the impact of such misguided policies around the city, where there are lots of ghost commercial blocks that have been converted into apartments, making neighbourhoods that much less convenient, walkable and lively.
Kate 15:52 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
It really depends on the context. I agree about needing food and basics on the street in the new development. The Faubourg Québec built just west of there – I’ve mentioned this before – is spooky in having zero commercial presence, not a dépanneur on its sterile streets, let alone a café or a bakery or a fruiterie. But there had been talk of putting mall‑type shopping in the redeveloped Maison Radio-Canada area at some point, which would be a different kind of distortion. I don’t think it needs shoe stores.
I so totally agree on the ghost blocks. There are some on Bernard and on Rachel and they deaden the whole vibe.
CE 18:25 on 2021-03-18 Permalink
Verdun is the worst for ghost blocks. So many commercial spaces turned into what I can’t imagine are very nice apartments. The older parts of Centre-Sud seems to have been peppered with lots of little corner shops, most of which have been converted to apartments. Imagine how much cheaper commercial spaces could be if more first floor spaces were shops?
John B 08:53 on 2021-03-19 Permalink
Verdun the neighbourhood or Verdun the street? For the neighbourhood which places are you thinking. Only the former garage on Gordon & the former copy shop at Galt & Verdun come to mind immediately.
Verdun the street has some sort of by-law where if a property that held a business business ceases to be a business for 2 years it can never become a business again and must be residential. So we end up with the former copy shop, or the apartment with the cheque machines sign above the door. I assume that the owners of the Anodization Verdun site are waiting for the 2-year period to end so they’re conveniently forced to build residential units.
Kate 09:14 on 2021-03-19 Permalink
Wow. The opposite should be true. If anyone wants to build a residential building on a commercial street, a permit should only be given to projects that have commercial space on the ground floor, keeping the street alive.
John B 09:40 on 2021-03-19 Permalink
My understanding is that Verdun Av used to have a very high concentration of pawn shops & deps, to the point where the council at the time decided they needed to do something about it so they passed this to try to tame the area a bit. Not the greatest solution in hindsight, but it was a different time.
Maybe someone with a longer history in Verdun knows more than I do.