André Dubuc, La Presse’s business writer, lists changes expected in town in 2024, among them the launch of Royalmount and the opening of more sections of the REM, as well as the revival of Eaton’s ninth floor restaurant.
In a city that’s been suffering from a decline in retail shopping, I wonder how well the vaunted new “centre commercial nouvelle génération” will do, with its Louis Vuitton and Gucci boutiques. I’m hoping Montrealers will have better sense than to burn their cash in these emporia.
Uatu 12:50 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
Prime retail space downtown in the Eaton centre is now a huge arcade. I fully expect the same thing to happen in Royalmount once the fancy boutiques go belly up.
Kate 13:13 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
Here’s an item on the arcade.
Robert H 15:16 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
Andrew Lutfy, CEO of Carbonleo, the real-estate development company behind the Royalmount project is a firm believer that the affluent of Greater Montreal are currently undeserved. He’s aiming to attract those well to do who perhaps complain about Montreal’s meager luxury offering relative to Toronto, Vancouver, and New York. He believes there are enough of them to make his commercial Xanadu a magnet for their dollars. Lutfy is leveraging Royalmount’s success on the connections of his development partner company Carttera to LVMH and its porfolio of luxury brands. He has assembled a roster of first to market stores not to be found elsewhere in Quebec. In the absence of exclusivity, he’s leaning on opulence: the glitziest. The fanciest. I’m not optimistic, but perhaps things have changed in
Montreal. In any case, Lutfy has persuaded his investors.
Robert H 15:32 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
“”undeserved” underserved , whoops. Freudian slip?
carswell 16:13 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
My gut feeling is that Royalmount will attract visitors for the first few months and quickly lose its appeal. It will not be the new Dix30.
The negatives against the project are huge. The traffic, already horrible, will only become worse. The much-touted connection to public transit may actually be a bust; not only will you have to schlepp up to De la Savanne metro, you then will have to get on another escalator and walk more than half a kilometre along a barren corridor with an ugly, uninspiring view, no businesses or other attractions and the requirement that you run the gauntlet, share a difficult-to-escape-from space with whomever else might be there. Now imagine doing that alone late in the evening after a show…
Royalmount’s saving grace, the promised large residential development, has been nixed by the navel-gazing citizens of TMR.
And isn’t a big chunk of the sales of luxury boutiques like Louis Vuitton made to tourists? Isn’t that why those stores are so often located in otherwise unlikely spots (airports, Greek islands, etc.)? Exception made for out-of-towners attending a concert or other event at one of the complex’s promised cultural venues, what tourist in their right mind would want to travel to the uninspiring environs of Décarie and the Met to go shopping in a mall that, while somewhat impressive in its original renderings, has since been downgraded into something not so different from the Rockland Centre?
Maybe the completed Royalmount’s cultural, gastronomic and commercial offerings will be so mind-blowing that its success is ensured. Not holding my breath.
Ian 18:18 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
Hard to say, Rockland Plaza is doing well still. I know Royalmount is greater than Rockland by an order of magnitude but there is a major lack of retaill in TMR.
It takes about an hour to get from Rockland Centre to Mcgill College and Ste Kitty by transit. There are lots of people in TMR and VSL that will be happy not to have to go downtown.
Joey 19:13 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
Who exactly is taking their luxury purchases home on the metro?
carswell 19:15 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
My info is that Rockland Centre isn’t thriving, Ian, and this summer there were several vacant store spaces. TMR actually tried to push through a plan to allow the centre to be transformed, among other things by adding a large number of residential units with a focus on seniors’ housing but, much like Royalmount’s proposed residential component, a wary citizenry voted the plan down.
The public transit travelling time from Rockland Centre to downtown may be about an hour now but it’ll be about half that when the REM line opens later this year. Indeed, the REM may end up being another blow to Royalmount, giving transit takers in CDN, TMR, VSL and the northern West Island — Royalmount’s immediate potential customer basin — quick and easy access to shopping downtown. Carbonleo should be lobbying for an orange line extension to Bois Francs STAT.
Kate 21:34 on 2024-01-05 Permalink
Meager luxury offerings. I despair me of the human race sometimes.