Category Archives: Unrealized development projects

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Of Montreal and Manhattan

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How much of the Island of Manhattan do you think would fit into the space above?

I want you to imagine driving along Highway 40 heading west. Imagine starting at the intersection of Highway 13 and driving all the way to the Ile-aux-Tourtes Bridge. How long would that take driving at the speed limit with no traffic? Fifteen minutes? Maybe five minutes more?

Now imagine tracing that same route as the crow flies, and you are surveying the roughly one-tenth of the entire Island of Montréal which stretches out to your right. It would include Pierrefonds, DDO, part of Pointe-Claire, Kirkland, Ste-Anne’s and Senneville. That area, my friends, which seems so diminutive to so many West Islanders, is in fact just slightly larger than the entire Island of Manhattan. That most vital of New York City’s five boroughs, where 1.6 million people live, could easily fit in that space. In fact, you could put ten Manhattans on the Island of Montréal. Put another way, Manhattan is roughly the same size as Ile-Perrot. Or, if you were to look at the photograph above, everything south of Highway 40.

So what does this all mean? Well for one, we live in an exceptionally low-density city. And as the cost of petrol increases and citizens continue to move back to first and second ring urban suburbs on island, land value on island will invariably increase. As the urban core fills with medium-high density condominiums, the core will expand, as will the area in which high residential density is expected. I can imagine that if these trends are supported proactively by the city’s administration, a great many citizens may find themselves living on land worth far, far more than the value of the house they live in! Suburban land-owners may retire wealthier than expected by selling their properties for larger-density developments given that most of the newer generation of suburbanites have moved to the far less expensive (and lower density) developments off island, notably in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Ile-Perot, St-Eustache and Deux-Montagnes areas.


Just spectacular, I don’t know who took it, but great job.

In Manhattan, there are families whose wealth is owed principally to at one time owning large tracts of land which they sold for development. There are many more land-owners (and far more land) in private hands today on the Island of Montreal than on Manhattan in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, when the city extend much further than what today would constitue their Downtown. If our city were to invest in major public transit infrastructure development, such as a massive expansion of the Métro and commuter-rail network, we could encourage this conversion process. City’s densify along public transit system corridors, and there’s more than enough demand for greater accommodation on island.

Manhattan has a population density of roughly 27,000 per square kilometer, whereas Montréal has a density of 2,200 per square kilometer. The total area of the Island of Montréal (including Ile-Bizard, Ile-Ste-Helene, Ile-Dorval, Ile-Notre-Dame and Ile-des-Soeurs and several other small islands in the archipelago) is roughly 500 square kilometers. If Montréal was a single city covering that area, with Manhattan’s population density, it would be home to 13.5 million people.

Now I’m not advocating that we seek Manhattan’s population density, but we might want to consider the actual massive size of our island, and whether or not we’re using our land as efficiently as possible. Imagine if we were to double or triple our population density – it would still be less than a quarter the density of Manhattan spread out over an area ten times its size. That’s a far higher return on property taxes for the city while being able to simultaneously provide the additional tax revenues to protect a significant quantity of land for a much-discussed greenbelt.

More people paying taxes to a centralized city administration, with far more people making excellent use of our city services, stimulating our businesses etc, provides a more stable local economy. There’s no greater foundation than a lot of people living in close proximity, sharing a city they equally enjoy and appreciate, and running businesses providing all manner of services. The more people, the higher the land value, the greater the city’s budget grows, meaning larger sums can be issued as down-payments on loans for major development projects.

In any event, just some thoughts when comparing two interesting islands. I think we need to get bigger in order to exert a stronger influence in provincial and federal projects, not to mention greater economic muscle. There’s a perfect foundation for precisely this kind of growth which lies in a bigger population under a single administration.

Final thought РNew York City is about 500 kilometers due south of Montr̩al, a pleasant drive through the Adirondack region along the Hudson River Valley. Montr̩al is the preferred tourist destination for Manhattanites right now, and that could be potentially very lucrative. There are restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn specializing in Montr̩al cuisine, and some people have commented that Montr̩al has replaced Brooklyn as the new epicentre of the music scene. I think we may have the start of a special relationship Рso why not capitalize on it?

There’s been talk of a high-speed rail line running between our two cities, in the bucolic Hudson River Valley, for years and years now. There may be no better time to find private sector investment for such a rail line to capitalize on our newfound interactions with New York City, as the citizens of that city represent a considerable investment potential.

A high-speed line with pre-boarding clearance operating on a segregated track could potentially reach speeds in excess of between three and four hundred kilometers per hour.

Imagine Gare Central to Penn Station in an hour and a half. What could that mean for our tourism industry, not to mention our economy in general?

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Montréal’s Use it or Lose it List – 2012 Edition

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Abandoned Bldg on Laprairie in the Pointe, credit to John Bryce Davidson

The following is a list of heritage sites in the City of Montréal which are all in danger of passing a point-of-no-return of sorts with regards to any potential redevelopment. Unless action is taken, more or less immediately, many of these buildings may have to be destroyed, and so goes with them crucial cultural heritage sites, not to mention many potential business and educational opportunities as well. All of the sites on this list have the potential to be redeveloped so as to serve a cultural function, in addition to providing revenue streams. But as the buildings and locations herein lie abandoned, they not only stain the urban fabric, but lead to lower property value, not to mention morale. It is exceptionally important that the people of the City of Montréal exercise some sort of say over what happens to these sites, because at the very least, it’s simply bad for business to tolerate too many open lots, empty buildings and stalled development potential. We want to be attractive to investors and want a better, more socially conscious gentrification of the urban core. Finding new roles for the following old buildings will help re-invigorate several key sectors of the city and, I feel, help renew a sense of civic pride amongst the general population. In essence, we need to invest in ourselves in order to stabilize markets, spur re-development and ‘steer’ the real-estate sector with urban-planning and urban-preservation best practices clearly in mind.

Thus, the Use It or Lose It list, 2012 Edition. Hopefully we’ll have some progress in a year’s time. Entries are in no particular order.

1. The Empress Theatre. Empty since the early 1990s. Multiple stalled projects to redevelop building as a performance venue and cultural centre, currently owned by the City through the CDN-NDG borough. There were talks of holding public consultations about what to do a few months back, not sure what, if anything, has come of it. Situated across from Girouard Park in NDG on Sherbrooke Street West, prime location for a new condo tower. I’ve mentioned before that if the city were to work out some kind of deal with the owner of the small commercial building and parking lot next to the theatre, the site could be redeveloped with a condo tower built into the Empress, which could possibly be a source of funding for the theatre’s multi-million dollar renovations.

2. The Victoria Rink. Parking garage since the 1930s. This is quite literally the place where the modern game of hockey came together as a professional sport, and is also the site of the first ever Stanley Cup game. It stands just north of Boul. René-Lévesque between Stanley and Drummond – the length of almost all professional hockey rinks are roughly the same distance. There’s been talk of doing something with the building from a few enthusiasts but so far it’s still a parking garage. I doubt there’s much if anything left from the original building aside from the walls, but it’s location is important, given the site is underused (as an aboveground parking garage) and is adjacent to a large open lot extending towards Ste-Catherine’s Street, again – prime location for high-density residential or commercial real estate development. Embarking on a project to re-develop the Victoria Rink as a heritage hockey rink and museum is what most would propose doing with the site, though I’d add the possibility of housing an official Habs museum and further, using the space as a much needed medium-sized downtown venue.

3. LaFontaine House. Abandoned since the mid-1980s as a result of the Overdale fiasco. Though the house of one of Canada’s Founding Fathers is still standing, it’s not in very good condition, and I doubt there’s much left worth preserving in the interior. The current owners of the property (in effect, the entire Overdale block right across from Lucien-L’Allier Métro station) are keen to provide the house for use as a museum or interpretive centre, but that requires an obvious source of funding and a party interested in embarking on such an endeavour. If a renovation were to occur, I can imagine an end-product somewhat akin to the Shaughnessy House (at the Canadian Centre for Architecture). Given how few Golden Square Mile mansions and manors are left, and the historical significance of LaFontaine, you’d figure this is a no brainer, but so far it seems to soldier on as a squat. And on that note, the Mount Stephen Club is now closed, and the scuttlebutt is that it may be turned into a boutique hotel or otherwise integrated into a new hotel built on the side of the adjoining parking lot, both of which may be a particularly innovative solution to our on-going problem regarding dilapidated old mansions. Now the question is whether there’s enough interest to convert the Redpath Mansion and a few other old homes along similar lines.

4. Maison Saint Grégoire. Abandoned since the late-1980s, early-1990s I think. Located at 1800 Boul René-Lévesque West diagonally across from the CCA. Not an overwhelming impressive building, as a result of the boulevard’s expansion in the 1950s, the row-houses were torn down revealing the rear of the building. It was once an old folk’s home run by a religious community, but today, if it’s used at all, it’s as a squat. Any number of things could go here, and given the size of the site you could potentially put in a medium sized residential or commercial tower, possibly integrating into the existing structure. But given the institutional nature of the area, if may make more sense to try to encourage it’s use for education purposes. The building seems to be in good shape from the outside, and if we really anted to, I’m certain it could be transformed into a large homeless shelter without too much cost to the tax-payer. Of course that in turn wouldn’t do much to help the gentrification of the Shaughnessy Village area. Quite a conundrum, as the site has a lot of potential given a tall building at that spot could provide some exceptional views.

5. The Eaton’s Ninth Floor restaurant. Moth-balled for future use since about 1999. Apparently this place used to be a huge favourite for the downtown office crowd, offering traditional English and French cuisine at decent prices in an opulent Art Deco dining room modeled after one on the passenger liner Normandie. If nothing else it ought to be available as a reception space, but I still can’t fathom it wouldn’t work as a restaurant once more. Art Deco is always en vogue and we have an excellent collection, but letting this space slowly degenerate is the worse kind of fate. The City, in my opinion, needs to use it’s resources and connections and make a restaurant work on this site, or else find someone interested in establishing a downtown ‘establishment’ restaurant – we’re sorely lacking.

6. Notman House. Last I heard there was an ambitious project to make this the city’s start-up hub, but the last few times I passed by it didn’t seem as if much was happening. I seem to recall seeing the for sale sign outside. In any event, if it pulls through, this would be an excellent use of the site. If not, we really ought to have a dedicated Notman museum in this city. Perhaps something as broadly defined as the Notman Photography Museum of Montréal, but either way, the massive quantities of high-quality Notman photographs of the Montréal of yesteryear should be more accessible, if for no other reason than to educate the public about photography in general and let people see what life was like here over a hundred years ago. A vital link to our past, Notman’s photographs are particularly interesting because they give us a good sense of late-Victorian era and early-Edwardian urbanism – Notman took many city perspective photographs, documented parks, plazas and squares, not to mention our architectural and engineering achievements of the era. I say it’s significant because, like it or not, a considerable portion of our city was developed in the era Notman was most active, and many enduring aesthetic qualities and design decisions are captured in his photographs.

And then you have the rest of the list. Grain Silo No. 5, a major achievement and enduring landmark of industrial architecture, unused for almost twenty years. The most recent proposal I heard was to turn it into a massive data centre. Probably as good a use as any other, but I’d love to see some actual life return to this sector. Unless the Port of Montréal plans a major expansion of this area to accomodate growing maritime traffic, or develop a proper cruise/passenger terminal somewhere in the Old Port, then the options are somewhat limited moving forward. There’s a lot of diverse activity in the area known as the Cité-du-Havre, which is roughly everything East of Bridge and South of Wellington, including the Bickerdyke Pier. That said, there’s little to unify the area, and the large land allotments to light industrial activity may soon lead to residential re-development. Personally, I think our city could use a neighbourhood where port functions, commerce and high-residential developments could interface so as to create an urban neighbourhood of the kind the word Havre evokes in my mind.

I’ll have to come back and expand on this later, so stay tuned for a follow-up article. Consider these sites as threatened to one degree or another: the Imperial Theatre, the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Atwater Library, Fort Senneville, the Montreal Children’s Hospital, the Rialto Theatre, the Griffintown Gasworks and Saint James United Church all come to mind as places we need to seriously consider for City-sponsored redevelopment.

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Resurrecting Windsor Station

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Windsor Station, looking north along Peel, 1926

I regularly take the AMT’s Deux-Montagnes line to commute to the city from Pierrefonds, and like many other commuters, I’ve noticed something – a significant lack of space. The Deux-Montagnes line is regularly over-capacity; it’s not so much that there aren’t any seats, it’s that there’s barely anywhere to stand. And this is apparently the same for most of the AMT’s other lines as well. While the agency moves forward, albeit slowly, on the development of new lines to serve new areas, it hasn’t done much to alleviate over-crowding on the existing lines. As such, the commute isn’t terribly pleasant, and the infrastructure within the city designed to handle the commuting masses has left a lot to be desired for quite some time. It’s woefully inadequate and lack of planning today will only lead to a worse situation tomorrow.

Gare Centrale seems to be over-capacity in general. Massive cues to board VIA trains now regularly stretch the length of the station, and during rush hour congestion is even more severe as throngs of office workers huddle around waiting for up to twenty minutes in order to ensure they get a seat on the commuter trains. It’s beginning to seem very clear to me that concentrating all inter-city and commuter traffic in the same space isn’t such a great idea, especially if we recognize the growing trend in the use of passenger and commuter rail options in Montréal.

As it happens, there was once a magnificent train station but a few blocks away from Gare Centrale, a station very well integrated into the urban transit and traffic fabric inasmuch as the urban core it was designed to serve. Today it is little more than commercial office space, an underused public square and a seldom used convention space. The Bell Centre stands between Windsor Station and the open-air platform that is the Lucien L’allier. If only we hadn’t been so myopic in the past, we could have endeavoured to secure investment in rail travel. It is after all a cornerstone of our local economy, as true today as it was when we were the commercial capital of the entire country.

It occurred to me, as I was walking through Place Ville-Marie to make my way to the station, that fifty years ago we accomplished a magnificent feat of engineering and architecture, by building a heart of the Underground City and one of our most vital skyscrapers and office complexes above what had previously been an ugly, exposed railway pit.

If we could do that fifty years ago, surely we could do the exact opposite today. What if we were to resurrect Windsor Station by running the CP tracks which currently terminate at the Bell Centre, under it, and build a new platform under the station and arena in much the same fashion as Gare Centrale?

The first issue would be the Métro tunnel for the Orange Line which runs parallel with the tracks, so such a tunnel would have to start just to the West of Guy in order to avoid having to build under the Métro tunnel. Building a new train tunnel alongside it may be practical, and being able to remove the Guy and Lucien L’allier viaducts would improve the somewhat dour aesthetics of the area, not to mention allow real-estate developers the chance to build new buildings aboveground. Given Cadillac-Fairview corporation’s interest to build new condo towers and office space at the site, you’d figure it’s high time the multiple implicated parties collaborate to ensure Windsor Station can rekindle it’s former use as a major point of integration in the urban traffic scheme. Certainly, new residential and office development would be more attractive if the aim was to, in essence, create another PVM, though from below.

As it happens, this particular area may become the next major focal point for urban re-development in the City of Montréal. Consider not only Cadillac-Fairview’s proposal, but the open lots at Overdale, the parking lot across from the Bell Centre and the decrepit old buildings south of Saint-Antoine. Establishing a massive new train station in the middle, with an appropriate expansion of underground tunnels, passageways and access to other points in the Réso system, would stimulate growth in the area around in a manner similar to the way PVM anchors much of the CBD. It’s a natural extension, and the area could use the stimulus of people power.

Granted, it would be costly, it would take time and we’d have to overcome some significant obstacles, but the long term implications of alleviating over-crowding at Gare Centrale, expanding the Underground City and newly desirable land in the urban core, ripe for redevelopment, is worth the investment given the long-term return.

And the added advantage is that by not doing this, by leaving things as they are, we ensure no new development will take place in this area, or at least it won’t nearly be as impressive, important and fiscally sound. The status quo is inefficient because the status quo doesn’t suit our current nor future needs. By developing a whole new train station and subsequently spreading out commuter and passenger traffic between two inter-connected stations, we can increase the area of economic activity stimulated by the increasing group of people who fall into this category. In addition, we right a historic wrong, secure the use of a landmark and subsequently provide an economic stimulus with significant indirect stimulus spin-off. Transformative is an understatement.

Something to think about. There are about seven large tracts of land around the site which seem to be ideal for redevelopment, as office towers, condominiums, mixed-use developments etc, and all of them could be very easily inter-connected. That’s got to encourage the city inasmuch as the construction and real-estate development sectors in this city. A little bit of ingenuity and the will to invest in a much needed mega project of the kind that was once matter-of-fact in Montréal could help spur an urban development scheme of epic proportions.

I guess the question is how to get all the specific parties into the same room so as to pitch the idea.

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The LaFontaine House – Another Landmark in Ruin

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John Ralston Saul at the LaFontaine House – credit to Gabrielle Cauchy of Dimedia

The house above is all that remains of the once residential Overdale block, which was torn down in the 1980s in the name of urban renewal. You’ll likely know it better as a parking lot with kebab stand adjacent to Con-U’s fine arts pavilion. Thankfully this house wasn’t destroyed outright, though after years of neglect I can’t imagine there’s much left to save.

The reason eminent Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul is standing in front of this house is because it was once the home of Sir Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, a man of national importance to any self-respecting Canadian and Québecois. This is the man who, along with Robert Baldwin, helped establish responsible government in the 1840s, becoming the de facto Prime Minister of United Canada in 1848.

That’s right; nineteen years before John A. Macdonald became the first Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada, LaFontaine the passionate and zealous Patriote, follower of Papineau, was running things at a proto-federal level. If he and his accomplishments were better known in this country, by Canadians of any socio-cultural background, I’d argue we would at the very least feel a bit more comfortable with ourselves, and maybe have a bit more pride too. LaFontaine was a great man who overcame many obstacles and fought viciously to establish a Canada in which the only nationalism was pan-national, open to all minorities, in every sense a post-modern nation. He insisted on speaking French in the assembly and worked tirelessly with Robert Baldwin to establish a new nation of diverse peoples. We owe the country we have today in part to this man. He was one of our distinguished founding fathers.

And we, the citizens of Montréal, have let his house fall into disrepair.

Granted, a park and a tunnel are named after him, but neither will tell you anything about the man, his era or ideas.

The house has been on Héritage Montréal’s threatened list for some time, and city officials have been exceptionally slow to act. The lot has been purchased for $28 million and there are plans to develop a 40-floor condo tower, though a city spokesperson suggests its nothing more than an idea for the moment. One of the partners has suggested that he would like to convert it into a museum, but further stated it must turn a profit.

A for-profit, private museum dedicated to one of Canada’s most important historical figures eh?

For some reason it just doesn’t jive well in my noggin – maybe I’m too closed-minded.

In any event – for the time being the house is still standing and the Overdale block remains a big gaping hole in the urban fabric. It’s been this way so long people just assume it’s how it’s always been. Hard to think there was once a neat little community there.

But it still bothers me that we simply don’t try harder, and that our city officials have been all too interested in not getting involved for almost thirty years.

What will it take for people to recognize and promote their proud heritage? And why are we always so inclined to ‘let the market handle things’, especially the physical remains of our shared history, culture and identity. Some voice in the back of my head is telling me capitalism and the housing market really doesn’t care much for the life and times of one of our finest early leaders.

Food for thought; for a nation so chronically convinced it lacks a character, I wonder why we’ve never endeavoured to protect, preserve and promote the very real links we have to our past.

I’ll be keeping my eyes on this one.

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Resurrect the Arrow: A made-in Canada solution to the F-35 problem.

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The photo above is of two examples of the CF-105 Arrow, also known as the Avro Arrow, a supersonic jet fighter designed, built and tested here in Canada in the mid-late 1950s. It was a milestone in Canadian aviation and a great success for our high-technology industrial sector. The project was abruptly terminated in the late-1950s by the Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, who saw the project as emblematic of Liberal ‘big-government’ spending. Moreover, with the advent of long-range ballistic missiles and the launching of Sputnik (and subsequent Space Race) at the end of the 1950s, there was a widespread belief that ground and space based missiles would determine the strategic balance of the future. Thus the Arrow, the Iroquois engine and Velvet Glove missile system programs were all scrapped (literally, the aircraft were cut to pieces, engines smashed, blueprints burned in bonfires).

Avro Canada Ltd would go belly-up by 1962 as they had thrown almost all their efforts behind the project. Efforts to sell the Arrow or elements of the design to foreign nations were in fact prevented by Diefenbaker’s government (a Tory gov’t preventing free-market capitalism and over-regulating our high-tech and defence sector industries, funny) and many of the chief engineers would find work throughout the United States and Europe working for other major defence consortiums. Among others, former Avro employees would help design fighter aircraft in the UK, France and the United States, in addition to designing the Apollo Command and Service module. Indeed, as you can see from this Wikipedia entry Avro was involved in myriad state of the art technologies and were global aviation leaders.

A long time has passed since the Arrow program was cancelled. In its wake Avro would be sold to Hawker Siddeley (a British corporation), Canada acquired inferior American-built interceptors two years later (which employed nuclear weapons, not a popular move in Canada) and later, Canadair would take over construction and testing of Canadian-built versions of American-designed fighter models, including the Hornets we use today. It has been more than fifty years since we were so bold to dare develop our high-technologies sector by direct government investment and support as we once tried with the Arrow program.

And today, an opportunity has presented itself, one we seem to be very interested in squandering outright.

I don’t need to tell you about the multiple inter-related controversies surrounding the Harper government’s intention to procure 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (check this out for all you need to know), but I will mention this; the plan currently involves leasing engines and weapons, providing service and maintenance contracts to non-military (perhaps non-Canadian) contractors and is already significantly over-budget given how few aircraft we’re to receive. Trudeau’s defence department ordered 138 Hornets between 1982 and 1988, and most of these aircraft subsequently underwent a total overhaul, update and modernization program about five years ago, leaving us with approximately one-hundred serviceable and still lethal aircraft. Furthermore, Canada has always used twin-engine, long-range fighters to defend our territorial sovereignty. The F-18 provided additional benefits, given that it was aircraft-carrier capable (meaning Canadian pilots could deploy from American carriers in time of war) and could fulfill multiple roles, such as interception, strike, close-support, reconnaissance etc.

The F-35 is an inferior aircraft to the F-18 in many ways, and what’s most maddening is that the F-35, at best, could only be a tactical alternative to F-18 (ergo, we deploy F-35s to bomb Libya and leave the F-18s to defend our airspace). Back during the Cold War this is typically how we operated, using two-types of multi-role aircraft, one for tactical missions and the other being used for more strategic defence roles. While the F-18s will need to be replaced by the end of the decade, replacing them with an unproven, still largely experimental and expensive fighter is obscenely irresponsible. Now while Canada has been involved in the F-35 project for some time, we have no legal responsibility to procure them, and it just so happens a more modern version of our current aircraft (The Super Hornet) is available, proven and could even be built here (given Canadair/Bombardier’s previous involvement in aircraft construction). That, or we could be bold and build precisely what we need in large enough numbers we can then re-coup production and R&D costs by selling surplus aircraft to friendly foreign nations.

What I don’t understand, however, is why a Conservative and apparent patriot like Stephen Harper isn’t chomping at the bit to realize a new Arrow. Frankly, you’d think this is stuff his wet dreams are made of.

What a hero he’d be for Canadian industry! What a great Canadian, correcting a terrible mistake from his party’s past. If only his head was in the game. What’s generally accepted is that the Arrow was the ideal fighter for Canada, and Canada is still just as involved protecting its airspace and conducting, and so we still require an aircraft with similar capabilities.

The recent discovery of a set of two Arrow ejection seats in the UK has re-ignited the persistent rumour that an intact Arrow may have been smuggled out of Canada and flown to the UK, possibly with Hawker Siddeley’s acquisition of Avro Ltd. In the years since the project’s cancellation, bits and pieces of Avro’s projects have turned up across Canada, including the Avro Car, the Avro jet-powered truck and many pieces belonging to the Arrow and Orenda Iroqouis engine projects. Enthusiasts have been trying to generate enough funds to re-assemble a working Arrow with the engines for years now, but without significant capital it is unlikely said enthusiasts will go much further than scaled-down wooden mock-ups. Stage props really.

Even if we don’t build new versions of the Arrow, at least give us the chance to build something for ourselves, to demonstrate our expertise and innovation. Our nation needs to be given goals, and the citizens must feel a tangible pride for what their nation accomplishes. Failure to involve yourself in the affairs of the People in this manner is negligent. So again I ask is it wise to allow our nation to procure the F-35? And would we rather deal with the consequences of that purchase, or create our own solution?

At the end of the day, you can’t assume you’ll get much vision from free-market enterprise. Someone must instigate a nation’s dreams.

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A few things every Montrealer ought to know about Mirabel International Airport

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So I’ve been having a lot of discussions about Mirabel over the last few weeks, thought I’d share some ideas.

1. We still need it. Montréal is a major international tourism destination in addition to being a key port of entry for immigrants and refugees. Our city is growing as is interest in our city, this is undeniable. As we stimulate our development and continue on our path to becoming a truly global city, we will require an airport that can handle a steadily increasing number of passengers. Such an airport will grow, by necessity, to serve a steadily increasing population base and will stimulate industrial development around it. It is for these reasons primarily that Montréal must shift its focus away from Trudeau and back towards Mirabel. Trudeau is at capacity, Mirabel is only one-sixth of its planned size. What else is there to do? Moreover, it would be advantageous to re-purpose Trudeau to handle cargo flights and aircraft manufacturing and maintenance, given the existing concentration of industry and infrastructure adjacent to the airport. Mirabel, by contrast, is located in a rural area with plenty of room to grow. Built away from the city, Mirabel can operate twenty-four hours a day and a purpose-built infrastructure can be implemented so as to make access to the airport efficient and effective across the metropolitan region. Similar infrastructure redevelopment in Dorval is proving exceptionally difficult to implement.

2. The lack of access that led to Mirabel’s demise is either currently being implemented, in use, or otherwise still on the drawing board. Highway 50 from the National Capital Region (population 1.4 million) is about to be completed, I believe, as far as the intersection with Highway 15. The AMT runs trains between Montréal and Mirabel, on a track which can access the Deux-Montagnes Line (and by extension Gare Centrale), in addition to the Parc Intermodal Station. The train station at the airport has already been completed. We’re closer to realizing high-speed rail access to the airport than we realize – the problem is that we’re focusing on the wrong airport. Completing Highway 50 so that it connects with Highway 40 near Repentigny will allow a Northern bypass to mirror the now completed Highway 30 Southern bypass. And what better way to justify the construction of a new South Shore span than by simultaneously completing Highways 13 and 19? This way, the Montréal metropolitan region would be served by four East-West Highways intersected by a similar number of North-South Highways. A ring-road would be created, and Mirabel would finally be able to adequately serve the metro region, providing the catalyst and focal point for new highway development. And that’s just the highways. While the Fed claims high-speed rail is an expensive dream, there’s no denying the very real demand within our own metropolitan region – so let us lead the development by starting on a smaller scale. A bullet train running between the Downtown of Montréal and Mirabel will lead to the creation of a high-speed rail link between Mirabel and Ottawa. Then it will be expanded from Mirabel to Québec City. A train travelling at 120km/hour could run the distance between Ottawa and Mirabel in about an hour. At a slightly higher speed the trip from Mirabel to Downtown Montréal could be made in as little as fifteen minutes. All of this would improve transit and transport throughout the region, and expand our airport market to a considerably larger population, perhaps more than five million people across three borders. Let’s pay for it now so that we may profit from it tomorrow.

3. Low jet-fuel prices and longer-range aircraft made stopping at Mirabel unnecessary in the 1980s and 1990s and gave rise to Pearson Int’l Airport in Toronto as chief Canadian gateway due to the rise of Toronto’s economic prominence and rapid population growth. Today, fuel prices are high and unstable; though aircraft have grown in size considerably, so Mirabel may once again be in position to wrestle away the title of Eastern Gateway from Toronto. This is the kind of economic competition our State requires, and perhaps Toronto may be better off re-focusing it’s efforts on trans-hemispheric travel. Who knows? I’d just like to see what would happen if we pushed ahead with Mirabel to take business away from Pearson. It’s what capitalism is all about right? Better public transit access to strategically situated airports able to adapt to new technologies will define the gateways of tomorrow, and for this reason Mirabel is superior to Pearson in many respects. Let’s see what the free market has to say about it. Again, Pearson, though large, is nearing capacity and constrained from large-scale growth by what has already grown up beside it. And we can’t grow unless we have the infrastructure to allow for growth. So whereas the citizens of Toronto may one day have to plan an entirely new airport even further away from the city centre, all we have to do re-connect our airport to our metropolitan ‘circulatory system’. The advantage will soon be ours.

4. Mirabel wasn’t designed to fail – we let it fail. Fixing it is still a possibility, but we need to act quickly so we can save what’s already been built. We don’t want to have to start from scratch at some point in the future because we lacked foresight today – that’s criminally negligent economic policy. We spent a lot of money in the past and haven’t seen a decent return on our investment. So, invest anew – but invest in fixing the problem, once and for all. Whatever the initial cost, it cannot compare to the potential return a fully operational Mirabel would provide in terms of direct revenue and indirect economic stimulus. There are no mistakes, just innovative solutions. If we were really smart, we’d recognize that planned regional transit and transport projects can be brought together under a larger plan to provide the access necessary to make Mirabel a viable solution to our airport problem. Ultimately, it’s all inter-related and could stimulate key sectors of our local economy.

We were once a daring and imaginative people, we had bold ideas and planned on a grand scale. Somewhere along the way we became convinced we were no longer capable of performing at the same level, and settled into a holding pattern of society-wide malaise. Today we are restless, and we are daring to ask how we came to be, and where our former power came from. Of late, it seems that we’ve regained our swagger, our attitude. So let us push those in power to dream big once more, and push for the long-term, multi-generational city-building we were once so good at. We have it in our blood, but our pride is still damaged. Let us regain our spirit by turning our past failures into tomorrow’s successes.