Montreal City Weblog

Kate 21:15 on 2023-01-31 Permalink Reply  

• Ian 09:00 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  Thanks for the link! I was trying to find it but every news story I found didn’t link to the survey.
  While I look forward to a new use for this building I am concerned that turning it into a hotel, offices and business will lead to even more rapid gentrification of the area. Community spaces, working studios, an indoor activity centre … there are SO many better ways this space could be put to use that would help the community, not just the well-to-do elites whose interests PM seems to be representing more and more exclusively …also what’s with the early 00’s Mies van der Rohe “industrial chic” knockoff look on the new bits & the windows?

• Margaret 09:07 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  I filled in the survey and there is a space to include comments. I too would like to see some lengagement of the local community apart from “buying things” in it. A Maison de la Culture sort of dedicated area.

• MarcG 09:51 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  Some inspiration: https://www.batiment7.org

• Ian 11:26 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  Except ideally less exclusive – there are a lot of people in the Point that have complained about feeling excluded – particularly poor people and POC. It is very much the kind of elitist “creative class” Richard Florida – style gentrification that is ruining both the Point and Mile End.

• DeWolf 12:08 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  I think the city should require the developer to set aside a large portion of the office space for community and cultural organizations, with below-market rents and management by an established non-profit. It doesn’t seem right for there to be no community space in such an exceptional project.

  That said, a lot do the online commentators seem to think the city owns the building and they can just snap their fingers and turn it into social housing or artists studios or something like that, but their power lies in approving or denying the zoning derogation and imposing conditions. They can’t change the vocation of a privately-led project.

  A lot of people hate the idea of it being a hotel but there’s clearly demand for people to stay outside of the downtown area, and suppressing supply will just feed the Airbnb monster.

  As for the architecture… I’m not a fan of the faux-industrial windows. If you’re going to punch new windows into the façade, take a more contemporary approach. Otherwise you risk making the building look some some generic loft project.

  @Ian what does PM have to do with this project, other than having the power to approve or deny it? You make it sound like it’s their idea in the first place.

• mare 12:23 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  There are a lot of working studios in that area already, and I’m afraid studios in a newly renovated fancy building will be very expensive and only for the happy few.

  I wish the traffic lanes on the Van Horne viaduct were reduced (so drivers don’t treat it like a highway despite the 40 km speed limit) and a bike path and nice footpath was added.

  That way the building will become part of the Mile End.

  Now they recently fixed it up again because it’s falling apart the complete rebuild will be delayed a few years. Would love if they just demolish it and replace it with a long deep tunnel under the tracks and St-Laurent, and with a level crossing at the Clark underpass, another highway that needs to be ‘cityfied’. It’s a complicated mess there, with way too many car-centric concrete structures.

  Burying the train track in a tunnel would be even better. If they had planned it for the long term in the 50s it would have been cheaper than building (and rebuilding) all the under- and overpasses for the streets. (Parc, Clark, St-Laurent, St-Denis, Rosemont). Freight trains don’t need crossings, stations or lights so the tunnel would be very simple. It already has its own corridor, so a cheap dig-and-cover tunnel would suffice without complicated expropriations.
  It will never happen because CN owns that corridor and is king. They were first and everything else needs to adapt for ten trains a day.

  If I were king…

• CE 12:26 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  A hotel is definitely needed in the neighbourhood. There is so much office space around there and when clients or out-of-town employees come to the city to work at those buildings, they want to stay somewhere nearby. Usually they’re put up in Mile End Air bnbs. It really doesn’t make sense to have them stay in a downtown hotel and get them take an Uber or the 55 there and back every day.

  Personally, I like that style of window. It’s similar to what was used on this building, which I think turned out well.

• CE 12:29 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  @mare, someone from the city was interviewed about the viaduct on the CBC this morning and she said it’s nearing the end of its life and will need either a major overhaul or will have to be torn down by 2030. Hopefully it’s repurposed in a way that’s better than it is currently.

• Blork 12:29 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  Hmm. It’s encouraging that the developer has reached out to Heritage Montreal instead of just barging in with their own ideas. My main concern is that they preserve the overall look and scale of the building along with key details like the lettering and the water tank, and the diagrams show they plan to do that.

  I actually like the faux-industrial windows, as they fit in with the scale and historical era of the original building. Even if they’re not the original windows it looks like they COULD have been, so that somewhat preserves the look and feel of the building in its industrial and neighbourhood setting. Given what a well known and loved local landmark it is, it would be a shame to transform it into something unrecognizable or something that moves it out of its historical context.

• MarcG 12:40 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  @Ian: I’d be interested to hear those voices if you can point me to them.

• shawn 12:45 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  I do agree that a hotel is needed in Mile End. Especially since the one under construction on Laurier and Esplanade is sitting in limbo.

• mare 12:51 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  @CE The Van Horne overpass was at its end of life a few years ago, and was going to be torn down. But in the end they spent a few million dollars on patching-up to extend its life a few years. As is common in Montreal.

• Joey 13:11 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  LOL to the idea that there still remain parts of Mile-End that could be *more* gentrified. Good one!

  Yes, a hotel is needed, but, uh, you don’t have to look far to see what happens to hotel developments in Mile-End. I wonder what the city can do to ensure that this project doesn’t get similarly scrapped partway through.

  Anyway, a hotel-focused development as part of a grand agreement that short-term rentals will be actually forbidden (maybe the borough can work out a pilot project deal whereby they enforce the rules on behalf of Revenu Quebec?) seems like the right move.

• Blork 13:25 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  @mare, I’m not a civil engineer, but AFAIK you can’t just bury short stretches of train tracks because that would require adding both down and up grades that are too steep for trains. (To go from elevated to buried would be a drop of what, 20 or 30 metres?) They’d have to bury it for a very long stretch to smooth out that drop, like from Frontenac to Rockland probably, and you can imagine how much that would cost. Result: ain’t gonna happen.

• Joey 15:38 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  File ‘level crossings’ under the ‘careful what you wish for’ category… those frieght trains can be huge and slow… any idea what the average wait time and frequency of delays would be? I got stuck waiting for a freight train in the sud-ouest last year and it felt like a solid 15 minutes before the barriers raised. I wonder if it was actually a lot slower and only felt faster. The status quo (most people can illegally cross the tracks most of the time without danger of injury or mega-fine) might be our best-case scenario…

• Blork 18:41 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  Of course. Level crossings for a line that cuts right through the middle of the city like that would be a disaster. Mare was talking about burying it underground, but as I pointed out, that would be hugely expensive and disruptive for very little benefit.

• Joey 20:06 on 2023-02-01 Permalink

  I think mare was proposing both a tunnel and a level crossing. A tunnel is a non-starter but I think a lot of us reflexively assume a level crossing in mile end would be an improvement…