I suppose the city’s hungry for a larger tax base, because the mayor’s really keen to see the Hudson’s Bay tower get built in some form.
Updates from July, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Kate
-
Kate
Linda Gyulai writes in the Gazette about how airplane noise is up, not just from airport traffic but from smaller craft doing sightseeing loops over parts of town. Living in Villeray, I’m under a flight path and well aware of the return of airport traffic, but not so much subjected to the tourist stuff, which I think mostly circulates over Mount Royal.
The big planes are a pain, sometimes enforcing the suspension of a conversation while they pass over, but in summertime it’s more the power tools that wear me down. Right now someone’s using a grinder nearby, and there’s seldom a day that isn’t marred by somebody running a saw or a grinder or some other noisy device. Some are not even necessary, like the guys who come and use huge leaf blowers on the frontage of the subsidized housing across the street. Leaf blowers, in July. I have to close the window.
Sprocket
I work near the airport. There have been fighter jets leaving. They are VERY loud. I also live on the flight path in Bois Franc, haven’t noticed too much of an uptick in traffic though.
Kate
I wondered if I’d heard something noisier than commercial jets recently, but fighter jets move so fast that they’re gone by the time you take note and look up.
EmilyG
Ugh. Power tool noise is maddening.
MarcG
A neighbour of mine has a tiny patch grass in front of his triplex and likes to weedwhack it on weekend mornings. It takes him about 30 minutes because he stops and examines the fruit of his labour at regular intervals.
EmilyG
And then there are the neighbours out here in the suburbs who use landscaping services, and they have multiple people with loud tools going all at once, throughout the day.
At least it’s not all day, every day, for a year, like when I lived in an apartment in town and the people who bought the place next door had renovators there all the time and we couldn’t do anything about it.Blork
Back in the late 90s I used to go up to the top of the mountain on nice Sundays and string up a hammock between two trees and spend the afternoon in something resembling pastoral bliss. It was nice except that every 45 minutes or so a helicopter would fly right over the mountain, not very high up, loop around, and fly away. All afternoon, every 45 minutes. Low enough that I could see it was the same helicopter every time (a Robinson R44). It was annoying. I assumed it was someone giving helicopter tours.
Fast forward a few years and here I am living in Longueuil, a few km from the St-Hubert airport. My place is perpendicular to with the flightpath, however, so it’s not a problem. Except for those damn helicopters. It turns out it’s a company that does helicopter pilot training AND tours, and my house is right under their flight path between their facility (next to the St-Hubert airport) and downtown Montreal. And now they have two Robinson 44s; a red one and a dark blue one. Those things go over my house at least 15 times every day. By now I’ve gotten used to it so I barely notice.
We’re also right on the flight path for PET, for planes coming in from the west when the wind is blowing towards the east (which is most days). So we have dozens of passenger jets flying directly over our house every day, but at least they’re still pretty high up (probably 2-3000 metres), and they are descending, so they’re not loud at all. Far less noisy than the helicopters.
-
Kate
Despite news a few months back that the blue line extension would mean the closure of the Le Boulevard shopping mall at the end of this year, apparently the mall will stay open after all. If anything, the mall will be at a key transit point between the blue line terminus and the SRB Pie‑IX, and will probably flourish.
-
Kate
Shots were fired Friday evening against the front door of a mother and daughter with no known criminal ties. Nobody got hurt, and police suggest it was simply a mistake.
Update: TVA has some photos and reactions to the incident.
-
Kate
The young man found guilty last week of stabbing a man to death in Villeray in 2019 has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 12 years before he can be paroled. TVA’s headline that suggests Noah Pépin is being locked up “far from rehabilitation” could be misleading: it was the judge who said the fact that Pépin walked around armed with a knife suggests he’s not going to be easy to reform.
denpanosekai 14:16 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
OCPM is NIMBYing the shit out of this project……… it’s downtown for fuck’s sake. Build them tall and often!
Kate 14:26 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
Taller than Mount Royal?
Ephraim 17:43 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
If we don’t build more places for people to live in the city… they will live in the greenbelt. We need higher density… higher, but with some greenery around it or in it. People complain about rent… well, we need more apartments, houses and condos if you want rents to be affordable. It’s economics 101… supply and demand. And if we curtail supply while demand is increasing… we get higher rents and higher prices for condos and houses. Open up the supply… build higher, smarter, more sustainable with more green space.
ant6nd 18:42 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
There are diminishing returns for height. Skyscrapers in parks don’t compete well on density with more urban/human-scale forms.
Kate 18:55 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
Ephraim, you would be astounded to know how many flats and apartments are standing empty in this town right now. If they were rented out, we would have no housing crisis.
ant6n 21:08 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
Germany has the Zweckentfremdungverbotsverordnung, declaring leaving residential units empty an illegal use for them. Isn’t there something similar here?
Ephraim 21:25 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
@Kate – There are likely many reasons, including the fact that with the standard lease, it can take from 6 months to a year to regain possession, but if you rent short-term, you can take possession at the end of a month. And of course we don’t tax unoccupied apartments. Which is one reason that we should have a registry of addresses and occupancy for tax purposes. But then… that’s a silly idea, following the money.
Perhaps a modification of the tax roles so that you have to register the occupant to pay residential rates, and if it isn’t occupied, a tax rate that is commercial, for example… so there is an incentive to have it occupied. I don’t know enough to figure out how to do this, but we do need to do this. Just as we need to build more to lower the supply and demand curve.
Ephraim 21:27 on 2021-07-31 Permalink
RQ requires you to list the SIN of someone that you pay as an independent contractor. I had to list the payments to my handyman for RQ. I don’t see why we can trace SIN to occupancy.
Philip M 00:46 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
Just pointing out that the Bay tower would be for offices, not housing.
Kate 09:16 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
Is there growing demand for office space, though?
Uatu 10:09 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
Office space? I thought that there was enough downtown. I just don’t want even more of de maisonneuve covered in shadows
Kevin 17:09 on 2021-08-01 Permalink
There is demand for smaller offices, tiny spaces for a couple people to work, and that’s why contractors are carving up large offices into small places.
Another big office tower downtown is a pre-pandemic business model that should have been rethought before it was submitted.