Esplanade Tranquille takes shape
Shuyee Lee reports on Twitter about the Esplanade Tranquille downtown, on Ste‑Catherine at Clark. CultMTL also has a report. The new square was inaugurated on Monday.
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Joey 15:01 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
The skating rink is a good addition. Not sure the city needed to develop build for a flagship/celeb restaurant though. Eight million sounds insane for this project. Good times for organized crime, I suppose.
Kate 15:29 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
Eight million doesn’t buy much these days. We think about what a sum like that would do for us personally, but when it comes to acquiring land, paying the lawyers, paying city hall salaries, dealing with the old infrastructure in an area like that, fixing it up, paying the engineers and designers, doing whatever PR is needed around the project – government does have to think about informing us how they’re spending the money – yeah, it adds up, quite without any rakeoffs to the boys.
Whatever can be said about city hall now, I don’t believe it’s tied to the mafia like in the days of Tremblay. I’m not saying there might not still be a few snow removal or landscaping contracts in a couple of boroughs that may be handed out to shady businesses, but it isn’t like it was, and fatalistically assuming city business will always be corrupt is a great way to make sure it always will be.
Meezly 15:45 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
I think you guys missed a digit? wasn’t the final price tag almost $80M?
I’m sure it’ll be nice when I see it with my own eyes and will definitely check out the rink come December, but looking at the images… for that price, the finished space seems… underwhelming.
Joey 15:45 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
Sorry typo. It’s eighty (80) million.
Kate 16:05 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
Oof.
Well, that’s a bit different. But I still don’t think it necessarily means the mob.
The problem with public works in our time is scope creep. One example I always think of was the plan to upgrade the Lafontaine Park outdoor theatre about ten years ago. Bit by bit they added more and more features so that to a fairly simple plan to make the seating more comfortable and the band shell type structure more stable, they were tacking on high-tech multipurpose lighting and projection equipment and I don’t know what all else, and the whole idea got so expensive it fell down of its own weight.
Likewise, in George-Etienne-Cartier square, they needed to rebuild the swimming pools, which were crumbling. But then they started adding features to the park chalet, meeting rooms for community groups, other stuff I don’t remember. The project did, I believe, go forward, but it took a hell of a lot longer than originally promised, and deprived the area of a pool for at least one summer.
Like the periodic addition of features to the Botanical Garden, every individual feature taken on its own is worthwhile and useful, and its champions will jump on the opportunity to get something built. But it always makes every project more complicated and more expensive than it sounded like it was going to be.
Joey 16:11 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
It almost sounds like the mafia dictates that major public works, for which they make boatloads of money, creep ever larger. The mobsters get a cut of a bigger pie, politicians get to build more legacy things (and have to make fewer and fewer decisions) and the citizens are stuck with the tab. Wouldn’t be so terrible if the quality of the work wasn’t so terrible.
Kate 16:20 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
Joey, if I saw any evidence that the mafia was dictating things, I’d post it. But I don’t. Occam’s razor suggests that bureaucracy alone is the more likely culprit.
DeWolf 17:41 on 2021-08-30 Permalink
Beyond the usual overruns due to delays and inflation (keep in mind this project was meant to open a year ago), the high price tag is because there is a storage facility underneath the square that will be used by festivals to keep their equipment. That, combined with the geothermal heating for the pavilion and refrigeration for the rink, added to the price tag.
Also, the pavilion will have change rooms, washrooms and other public facilities, not just a restaurant. And there’s no mention of a fine dining or celebrity restaurant so I’m not sure where Joey got that impression.