The Gazette’s Twitter feed CityHallReport (Linda Gyulai) makes the following interesting observations Thursday:
– Every Montreal mayor since 1960 has won a second mandate, with the exception of Coderre (2013‑17).
– Comebacks are super hard for ex-Montreal mayors. Only Jean Drapeau pulled it off… in 1960. But not Jean Doré (defeated 1994, failed comeback 1998) or Pierre Bourque (defeated 2001, failed comeback 2005).
The SPVM installed nine new public surveillance cameras recently, but community groups are not convinced they help cut crime. Cops have not presented any evidence that the existing ones were useful: the police spokesman here says some hand-wavy things about how sometimes they help identify a face or a licence plate, but gives no examples.
So more surveillance, but no body cams for police. Ok.
The Transportation Research at McGill group has launched a new mobility survey, which may be of interest. It’s clear that they need new data for how the pandemic has influenced our choices in how we get around town.
Interesting survey. This seemed detailed without being tedious.
Quebec’s local shopping streets are doing surprisingly well just now, in terms of business and of vacancies. There’s a list of Montreal street vacancies at the bottom: St‑Denis is still suffering a little at 10.6% vacancy but many are below 5% with Jarry clocking in at an amazing 0% vacancy rate.
Hopefully the holiday season will benefit local shops.
Shoplifting may be on the rise – the General 54 boutique was recently hit hard when 2 shoplifters made off with $1500 worth of goods. On their FB page, there’s a video of the thieves in action and they’re hoping to identify them.
Wow, those two thieves were slick. If they pulled this off so seamlessly in such a small boutique, they’re doing it to others as well.
The owners ought to be looking out on resale sites – FB marketplace, eBay, Etsy and so on – to see whether any of the pieces is put up for sale. I doubt the thieves were doing it to replenish their own wardrobes.
St-Denis had a vacancy rate of 23% in 2019. That has been cut by more than half over the pandemic which is pretty incredible. And yet this article features a lengthy quote from a disgruntled clothing store employee who claims the street is “dead.” The trend is just the opposite – in a few years, we’ll be seeing headlines about the renaissance of St-Denis.
There were a few commercial strips that were hit badly during the pandemic, like Notre-Dame in St-Henri, but they all seem to have bounced back. The only one I can think of that is still really struggling is Notre-Dame in Lachine, but it’s about to go through a major overhaul that will improve the pedestrian environment. There’s also a lot of new development around there that will probably boost its fortunes.
Notre-Dame in Lachine is somehow going well… and not well at the same time. You can see some hope (Library, quality thrift-store, small independant take-out eating places), but at the same time, it’ll take 10 years before we see Lachine-Est being a true neighborhood, and 10 years before any kind of fast-transport to downtown (SRB/Tramway/anything) on Victoria avenue.
Lower-Lachine is getting gentrified very slowly because it’s about the only place near downtown that you can still buy at an “acceptable” price, the poorer people getting kicked out the same way Verdun did it in the past 5-10 years.
Saint Henri is really interesting because of the number of places that opened during the pandemic. I thought for sure it was dead – new businesses with recently raised rents – but it’s startling how many opened.
We’ll know nature is truly healed when windows get broken in the name of anti-gentrification.
“Note that Côté Mercier’s study does not take Sainte-Catherine Street into account. The firm says it preferred to remove it from its analysis because of the numerous works and the impact on traders.”
Yeah, that’s BS. Leave out the single most important shopping street that is experiencing the worst effects due to all the crazy construction.
They made a legitimate choice, Phil M. While parts of Ste‑Catherine may be in a sense local shopping for downtown dwellers, it’s altogether a more major shopping nexus than, say, Masson or Wellington. I see why it could have been deemed to distort the stats.
For the time being, Ste-Catherine is a major outlier and would have to have been excluded from any generalizations based on the analysis. I suppose they could have included it but any conclusions drawn about it would reveal little more than how the street’s merchants are managing during mega-construction.
The two main mayoral candidates are still neck and neck as the first weekend of voting looms. The number of registered voters is down, but what’s important is not so much the number of voters, but the percentage who exercise their right to vote.
La Presse looks at the main issues in the campaign. The English-language debate is Thursday evening.
The city’s estimate of how many residential buildings have lead pipe water entrances has been adjusted upwards from 50,000 to 64,000. But they’re being replaced, one by one.
dhomas 16:54 on 2021-10-29 Permalink
In other Twitter election news, Sugar Sammy seems to be giving his endorsement to Coderre:
https://twitter.com/sugarsammy/status/1453785054682009605
Disappointing.
JaneyB 18:31 on 2021-10-29 Permalink
I don’t get why some hate Plante for the construction. All mayors have to fix the highways. What better time to do it than when there’s less traffic due to covid? Also, the REM is messing with some roads. Is that Plante’s fault too?
Reminder: Advance polls are tomorrow and Sunday.