Metro follows Le Devoir with a similar piece about the decline of commercial life in the Mile End. I’m puzzled by the person who says “il se passe la même chose ici qu’à Griffintown” because to me the two situations are nothing alike.
Updates from March, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Denis Coderre has been crowned the official head of Ensemble Montréal and enters into his role on April 7. Lionel Perez claims he’s thrilled.
thomas
Doesn’t Ensemble Montreal still have a significant debt left over from the last election? I wonder how that figures into things.
Ant6n
The caucus selected him to be party leader? That really is a crowning…
Jebediah Pallendrome
What an absolute joke
Kate
Yep. No party congress or election, no other challenger for the position, simply a coronation.
thomas, almost a year ago the party was in a $400,000 hole. That’s the most recent news item I can find.
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Kate
The SPVM is overwhelmed with fraud cases – identity theft, phone scams, all kinds – although perps often get off with little or no attention from the justice system, and victims are largely left to their own devices.
denpanosekai
In fact SPVM didn’t even want to hear about my case of identity theft, because I was not frauded ($$$) overall. Just have to change my SIN and stuff. NO BIG DEAL.
Ephraim
@denpanosekai – Did they take a report? Or did they try to convince you not to report it? No report… no crime.
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Kate
Quebec has begun to hedge on the baseball issue, saying studies on the question of baseball in Montreal have only just begun.
Kevin
La Presse had an article earlier this week (link buried in the above) estimating that the best case in tax revenue for Quebec from a baseball team would be around $4.25 million (and about the same for the Feds). It could easily be nothing.
That estimate is based on the assumption that players were taxed for the days they lived here during a season split between Mtl and Florida, which in turn is based on the assumption that players would not take advantage of Retirement Compensation Arrangements (conventions de retraite) which is like an RRSP* for super-rich people so they can take their money and run off to a tax haven when their short sports career ends.
*A player can put millions of dollars in it each year, cutting their income tax by hundreds of thousands annually. As far I can tell, players for a team split between countries could put their entire Canadian-based income in this shelter and pay $0 in Canadian income tax.
Spi
@kevin you should specify that $4.25M figure is only for income tax on player salaries. It does not include the income tax for all the related staff, nor business taxes for related entities. It also doesn’t include sales taxes on ticket or concesion sales.
So to say that $4.25M is the best-case scenario for all tax revenues is very far from the truth.
Kevin
@spi
2 quibbles: Last week Legault was taking about how the government could spend income tax revenue from players on other matters. So we’ve demonstrate the amount is pretty damn low.Secondly, the spinoff income from everything else you mentioned is fairly plastic — people who are going to spend money on entertainment will spend it on the entertainment is available. So if there is no baseball team, that money will be spent on other sporting activities, or movies,or videogames, or bars,or restaurants. A sports team doesn’t create new spending in any fashion – it just takes a little bit from everything else and collects it into a pile which is often hoovered out of the community.
To put it in other terms — Think of what Quebec City could have done with $400 million instead of building a hockey rink.
Spi
@Kevin, I usually disagree with pretty much everything Legault has to say but he was using the player salary as an example to demonstrate a point.
Your second point fails to look beyond local concerns, I’ll give you the business case that was floated by the promoters of the baseball team years ago when it was being discussed more seriously. The idea was that a team in Montreal combined with an often discussed realignment of the NL and AL into more regional divisions would see Montreal in the same division as some of the biggest teams in baseball like the Jays, Red Sox, Mets, Yankees. The rationale being that (when borders reopen) it would be a significant draw to bring American tourists here and their entertainment-related spending, which practically speaking is new spending that wouldn’t happen.
Whether you buy with the image they are trying to sell us is up to you, a new sports team doesn’t generate more spending it only displaces it from elsewhere. In this case, they would say from south of the border
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Kate
A decisive majority of the city’s blue collar workers have voted to accept a new contract offer.
Joey 09:28 on 2021-03-31 Permalink
Yeah, hard to tell if they are referring to gentification in Griffintown that has displaced a lot of the (admittedly relatvely few) pre-2005 residents or just the homogeneous commercial culture that has sprung up there.
Kate 09:33 on 2021-03-31 Permalink
Griffintown was absolutely moribund. There was no lively commercial or residential presence there before 2005. The collapse of the area was a historic progression – the abandonment of the canal as a commercial artery, the feud between Jean Drapeau and Frank Hanley, the decline in industrial production in Canada generally, all kinds of things. Which isn’t to say that nobody lived there or did business there, but it would never have been considered a fun place to be – contrary to Mile End before the recent decline.
Urban churn happens gradually, but there’s usually a tipping point that makes people realize an area is on the skids.
Joey 09:36 on 2021-03-31 Permalink
Agreed, though there were a handful of occupied residential streets pre-2005 (stretches of de la Montaigne, the horse palace), but the development that has happened there was almost entirely, AFAIK, the conversion of abandoned buildings and parking lots to dense housing. I lived there from 2005-2010. When I moved in there was *nobody* around on the weekends and a handful of unusal businesses. I think there was one spot you could maybe get a coffee. The arrival of the Metro Plus on Notre-Dame was big news. Nothing happening on Peel, Wellington was very quiet, etc. Night and day from what’s emerged in the last decade.
DeWolf 11:31 on 2021-03-31 Permalink
Griffintown has become a bogeyman for anyone who doesn’t like how their neighbourhood is changing.
As Kate noted, Griffintown was virtually uninhabited when redevelopment started. About 200 people lived there.
CE 18:25 on 2021-03-31 Permalink
@Joey, we must have been neighbours for a couple years. I considered it pretty fun to be in Griffintown at that time because you could do pretty much anything you wanted, there was hardly anyone around to care. There weren’t many people but there was a community feeling among those who did live there. Not having a grocery store (or any other services other than the worst dep imaginable) and spotty transit made it tough to live there though. I’m still amazed when I walk around and see what it has become.
Kate 19:59 on 2021-03-31 Permalink
I remember going with a friend to hang out with some guys she knew who had sorted out a decent living space inside an old warehouse in G-town. There was a lot of extra unused space, partly empty, partly filled with random postindustrial junk. I don’t remember their names or anything, and I have no idea whether they had any legal claim on the building, or were squatting.
Later I also checked out New City Gas because a friend of a friend knew the owner, when it too was also mostly empty. It’s an amazing building, but I’ve never been inside it since it was turned into a club.
MarcG 11:41 on 2021-04-01 Permalink
My wife and I went to see some bands play at Friendship Cove in 2007. It was an old car garage I think, or related to one anyhow, that some artists were living and hosting shows in. Kids were hanging off the exposed pipes in the ceiling – hot water? gas? scary! Hey I actually found a review of the exact show http://lucabears.blogspot.com/2007/10/friday-oct-26th-2007-japanther-ddmmyyyy.html, and here’s the not surprising street view of the address: https://goo.gl/maps/ccp8gJcQp7G5F8BH9.