Category Archives: Urban Redevelopment

A modest proposal, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Public art proposal, Unrealized development projects, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

The first five things I’d do as mayor…

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So I’ve been trying to narrow it down and it’s not working too well. In any event, here’s something to chew on…

1. Transit: Build a new Métro system to cover the entire Island of Montreal, with 24hr regular service and express trains during peak usage hours. In addition, the Bixi service should be expanded to cover the entire island, and a new tram system should be developed in tandem to Metro expansion so as to provide a necessary additional layer of public transit – this way one could cover the other during service disruptions caused by new construction and station renovations, in addition to the tracking and switching problems that will have to be dealt with as the system evolves. No matter what, any major expansion to one public transit system will require additional expansion to the other services, and there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ public transit solution. The sooner we accept that and plunge head-first into developing a full-coverage public transit infrastructure, the sooner we can eliminate a considerable amount of local carbon emissions and traffic gridlock. Moreover, such an expansion would likely result in a major increase in urban residential density on the island, as Métro access becomes a principle consideration for real-estate speculators. The intended goal is to develop an on-island real-estate market driven by and dependent on excellent public transit service; consider the trade-off for potential residents – moderately higher municipal taxes, but effectively no need for your own car. I think there’s enough interest amongst Montrealers – islanders and metropolitans alike – in addition to all those creative types from all over who flock here, to live an urban lifestyle. Ergo, we need to expand urban density, increase the tax-base for the city, and do so in a manner benefiting our local environment.

2. Micro-Commerce: Introduce a citywide micro-financing initiative to stimulate the creation of ‘street-side’ commerce, such as newspaper kiosks, hot dog stands, buskers, artisanal craft vendors, shoe shine stands etc. A key component of this plan would be the provision of publicly funded kiosks, similar to our ‘camiliennes’, for full-service public washrooms, cafés, bistros and dépanneurs. A city agency would provide small-business loans and licenses via lottery to local entrepreneurs and would further regulate placement, so as to assure proper distribution of services.

3. Cover the Décarie and Ville-Marie Expressways: pretty-much self-explanatory, as they are, in my humble opinion, eyesores which happen to do a lot of damage to the urban fabric. The Décarie trench would be turned into a tunnel from the Turcot Exchange to the intersection with Highway 40. On top, a massive linear park, a Montreal Champs Elysees with a tram running along the center. Inside the tunnel, an air-circulation system designed to suck polluted air into an ‘air-cleaning’ device, before being cycled outside. City-run agencies would assist in transforming the sector into a major retail, entertainment and residential hub, with the intended goal of gentrifying parts of Cote-des-Neiges and NDG. As for the Ville-Marie, a new park to run from St-Urbain to Sanguinet, designed to accommodate massive outdoor events and serve as a ‘central park’ uniting various diverse sectors of the downtown. From St-Denis to the foot of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, a park more akin to the one planned for Décarie, though in this case involving a renovation and redesign of Viger Square in addition to a several new public monuments, along with a triumphal arch located in the current Maison Radio Canada parking lot, between Wolfe and Montcalm. In the West End, a massive new housing project, based on Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67, the first phase would cover the Ville-Marie Expressway and CPR line from Guy Street to Rue des Seigneurs. A second phase would span from Atwater to Lewis Avenue in Westmount. Part of this project would involve placing the CPR line under Ville-Marie and encasing both in a massive two-tier concrete tunnel, and then building a new ‘Safdie City’ on top, bridging St-Henri, Westmount, the Shaughnessy Village and Little Burgundy.

4. Develop three new mixed-urban commercial, institutional and residential sectors: the first would extend the ‘downtown’ south along the Bonaventure Expressway corridor. In effect, this would be a continuation of existing revitalization projects, but I’d expand this new sector to include everything from Peel to McGill south of St-Antoine. Emphasis here would be to mix new medium-height office towers with middle-income condos and subsidized lofts/studios for local artists. Ideally, an influx of residents would provide the tax-base for an elementary school, CLSC, public library, community center and other vital community services. The second sector would occupy the area bounded by Cherier, René-Lévesque, Amherst and St-Denis and would seek to expand on the Réso sector concentrated on Berri-UQAM. As in the last case, mixed housing would be introduced with an emphasis on middle-income families and medium height office towers. Also, the Berri Street trench needs to be covered over; a large urban green with a farmer’s market would be a great addition to this otherwise bland part of the city. A third area prime for a major re-development would be the large industrial sector between Viau and Dickson, south of Sherbrooke to Notre-Dame in the East End. A large concentration of tall condo towers here would offer spectacular views of the city and river, not to mention the Olympic Park and the Botanical Gardens. But the area would also have to serve as a focal point for most of the eastern parts of the city, an area which has been cut-off from the rest of the urban fabric for some time. This means a significant investment would have to be made in terms of developing new entertainment venues, social and community services, retail space and, perhaps most importantly, hotels. The area already boasts several key tourist attractions, but there’s very little available locally for short-term stays. This particular location benefits from being well-served by public transit and would serve to link Hochelaga, Maisonneuve, Prefontaine, Rosemont and St-Leonard districts, creating a viable high-density urban area in the middle of the East End.

5. Eliminate all empty lots (including parking lots) between Guy and St-Laurent, from Sherbrooke to St-Antoine. This plan would see the construction of below-ground parking lots where possible, with new high-density buildings of any type above ground. The city would mandate that all new construction take place on these ’empty lots’ in this sector and would introduce a ‘development-project’ lottery for local construction companies and architectural firms. The idea here would be to try and maximize the number of residents living within the downtown, hopefully increasing the amount of social traffic and maximizing the tax base. In spaces where new construction is far from ideal, or where parking lots would be impractical, new parks and plazas would be built. No matter what, we need to focus on maximizing urban density and ensuring available land is used as best as possible. I can think of nothing more pathetic than parking lots where prime real-estate ought to be, and a fantastic example of this would be the massive lot across from the Bell Centre. These otherwise empty lots are signs of bad design and poor planning, and there not even that efficient either. Consider how many more cars could be parked in a multi-level underground lot. Consider how much better driving into the city would be if there were an abundance of underground spots available, and the city’s massive parking complex was hooked up directly to the Réso.

Anyways, food for thought…

A modest proposal, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

New development proposal for Mountain/St-Antoine district

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Cadillac-Fairview proposal for Mountain/St-Antoine district

The Toronto-based Cadillac-Fairview Corporation recently announced their intention to build new condo towers and a commercial office building around the Bell Center, occupying the site of Centennial Plaza. From the looks of things, the plan would include demolishing the old Canadian Pacific accounting building on St-Antoine, a nondescript 1950s structure located between the Bell Centre and Windsor Station. Cadillac-Fairview also owns property south of Windsor Station on St-Antoine it also hopes to develop in the future.

It definitely sounds like a good idea in theory. The area is in dire need of revitalization, though the Bell Centre has always seemed to be a gigantic box obstructing any sense of place or community, and as such a leading cause of the area’s poor state. Unfortunate too, as the area should be a major junction, linking the already established Underground City to Little Burgundy, the northern edge of Griffintown and the CBD of Montreal. However, while 710 new condo units, retail space and two new office towers would likely bring new life to the sector, it may come at the cost of permanently losing the possibility of revitalizing Windsor Station as a functioning train station.

Though construction of the Bell Centre cut Windsor Station off from the CPR tracks, and the station had not been in use for over a decade when construction began in the early 1990s, the Bell Centre is hardly an established, heritage building. For more on the details of the project, click here.

Allow me to explain: the Bell Centre was constructed to replace the Montreal Forum as the Forum had simply grown too old and was no longer capable of meeting the demands of a major sports and entertainment venue. In other words, arenas are designed either to be replaced or extensively modified, but the latter option can only go so far. The Bell Centre does its job extremely well and is located in a high-traffic area, but it is already beginning to show its limitations. Acoustics are far from ideal, and this is a problem given it serves as one of a small number of high-capacity concert venues in the downtown. Capacity has pretty much been met, and its my understanding that Habs games are regularly sold-out, so it is reasonable to think that Montrealers may be flocking to new arena sometime within the next twenty years, perhaps considerably sooner. There are other locations for a high-capacity arena (personally, I think either the site of the old Canada Post sorting facility in Griffintown, or the parking-lot of the Maison Radio-Canada would be ideal), and we should consider what we’ll do with the Bell Centre once it becomes obsolete.

I recommend destroying it completely, and re-activating Windsor Station as a primary urban train station with VIA, Amtrak and AMT service. Unfortunately, it seems as though Cadillac-Fairview and the AMT have no interest in seeing Windsor Station used as an actual train station. Andy Riga writes about this issue somewhat pessimistically on his blog, Metropolitan News.

The question as far as I see it is why the city doesn’t seem to be involved in determining how train stations are used, and what role they play in determining new development. Why is it that the real-estate speculators and developers come up with the plans? Shouldn’t the city be making the proposals, calling for tenders and such?

I’d like to see this development take place south of St-Antoine, between Peel and Mountain – there’s ample land available and several derelict and/or abandoned buildings. This kind of development would be ideal for this area, and as far as I know, it seems Cadillac-Fairview already owns the land. But building condo and office towers around a hockey rink that may already be obsolescent seems idiotic to me.

I think this city needs a more proactive planning agency – otherwise, as plans like this demonstrate, we may be creating more problems for ourselves and our future city.

Arts & the City, History and Culture, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Urban Redevelopment

The Centre de Commerce Mondiale de Montréal

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Our World Trade Centre - work of the author, Winter 2011

This is Montréal’s World Trade Centre, constructed in 1991 as one of the many urban redevelopment projects authorized during the Doré administration to celebrate our 350th anniversary in 1992. This project saw the re-integration of several old buildings facing Victoria Square and running along St-Jacques and St-Antoine. It is an example of a ‘horizontal skyscraper’, and runs from the Square to the Intercontinental Hotel, completed at the Eastern edge of the block in 1994.

Our WTC is not in any way truly comparable to the infamous New York City example, but it provides a fascinating addition to the urban fabric. It is a core component linking the diverse sectors of the Quartier International de Montréal, and thus links the Stock Exchange, ICAO, IATA, the Montreal Board of Trade, the CDP, the Palais des Congres and several hotels into a coherent narrative. It has also assisted in the rapid transformation of the Old Quarter which precipitated a drastic re-integration of several diverse sectors into a better-flowing urban centre. Best of all, with new condo and hotel projects already underway nearby, there is little doubt new office towers won’t be far behind, and one could only hope the city is doing all it can to draw more international organizations to our city, and foster the city’s role in global affairs. What we have in this sector is a high concentration of potential, but it always seems oddly inert when I pass through this part of the Underground. That being said, having shown this little slice of Montréal to several friends over the years, I can’t help but think the experience of this place alone would be enough to encourage large international organizations to make Montréal their home. It’s a truly captivating place.

The reflecting pool and statue of Aphitrite, by Dieudonné Guibal, CCMM - work of the author, Winter 2011
Another view of the reflecting pool; notice the backs of various old office buildings have been integrated into the complex so as to give the impression of apartment balconies. Consider as well the canopy covering the length of the former Ruelle des Fortifications
Our own little slice of the Berlin Wall - one of many gifts the City of Montréal has on display from other countries and cities - work of the author, Winter 2011
A modest proposal, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Political commentary, Urban Redevelopment, What were they thinking?, Worth reconsidering

If only I had a machine to rage against… {MUHC Superhospital WTF!}

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Conceptual image of the planned MUHC Superhospital - gladly, not the work of the author

So today I was treated to a lecture by a McGill architecture prof on the history of Montréal hospitals, with a focus on the Royal Victoria Hospital as an interesting perspective on local social history. Among several key themes, the idea of a personal and societal connexion to a particular hospital arose, with the Vic serving as an even better case study on some of the cultural and ethical considerations to make when proposing radical modernization of institutions. As we ought to know, the Vic, along with the Montreal Children’s, a sizable chunk of the General and the Montreal Chest Institute will all be folded into the new MUHC Superhospital currently being excavated at the site of the former Glen Yard, near Vendome Métro.

If you’ve been reading the news for the last twenty years, you no doubt have a vague, intrinsically hostile reaction to the mere mention of the new compound word superhospital; it’s a seemingly endless quagmire of incompetence, delays and, compounding it all, that eerie sixth-sense tingling at the back of your spine nagging as to its fundamental necessity. Unfortunately for those of us not yet completely numbed to the inertia of the Québec government (in any form), we’ve been left to go back and look over the evidence, and its pretty damning. Worse still is that the superhospital project has finally broken ground – literally. They’re excavating about five floors worth of highly contaminated soil to eventually build a 2,500 car capacity parking garage – right at the corner of one of the busiest intersections in the entire country. Atop this vehicular birdhouse will sit the hospital digitally rendered above; easily twenty years behind schedule, both new superhospitals have entered the preliminary stages of construction – that is to say, the demolition, excavation component. I encourage all of you to go see the mesmerizing sight of roughly ten construction towers looming over a massive floodlit pit – it’s truly breath-taking. The problem here is that the MUHC Superhospital is gearing up to be yet another white elephant in a city which has too many as is. Given that the buildings are in such an early stage of development, I think a new round of public debate needs to occur to make sure this project doesn’t become a complete disaster.

Here’s a short list of what’s going wrong. We’ve already covered the toxic soil – a result of the site’s former occupation as a freight railyard, pictured here:

The Glen Yard in the 1960s, looking east-northeast (I think)

And the fact that it’s located in the worst possible location, adjacent to the Turcot Interchange – which is due for a major renovation. And that they still haven’t factored in connecting this damned hospital to the Vendome Intermodal station (which is beyond incompetence – it seems clear to me that this omission was on purpose so that a contractor could benefit from an inflated price (estimated at $30 million to build a tunnel under the railway).

So on top of these scandals, and that the project is retarded to the tune of twenty years, it also won’t be able to accommodate the number of beds available in the hospitals it will replace – about 800 for the new hospital compared with about 1200 spread out through the current MUHC system. Read all about that here.

And then there are the common sense issues, like why anyone would build one big hospital when the city and province have already had considerable problems containing hospital based disease, such as C. difficile. Then there are the practical considerations: communities require hospitals, and hospitals build and maintain communities. Institutional memory and public reverence for institutions build character and solidify the social solidarity. It builds community consciousness and civic proprietorship. Building a white elephant superhospital, which is what this plan is shaping up to be, will not only result in cost overruns and traffic jams, it may also result in the hospital’s public losing faith in the institution. I don’t think Montréal Anglophones have much left to lose faith in – can we afford to lose important hospitals for the sake of modernization and efficiency?

That last point is another bone of contention. While the argument that a superhospital will save money because expensive equipment can be shared, the idea that the superhospital will be in any architectural or societal fashion ‘modern’ is blatantly false. This hospital was designed and conceived of in the 1980s. And it has been such an ordeal just to get to the point of breaking ground no one has given much thought to finding a more suitable location (ideally, closer to the city and university it is affiliated with and away from a traffic logjam) or what impact the hospital closings may have on the population it is intended to serve.

Among the hospitals slated for closing, the Royal Victoria Hospital is perhaps the most iconic and established amongst Montreal’s anglophone population; a building with far too many memories to be demolished. It has been expanded several times since it opened in 1893, and carries a caveat attached to the donated land and buildings – they can only ever be used for education and healing. A very old woman in Westmount is committed to making sure the wishes of Lord Strathcona & Mount Royal and Lord Mount Stephen are carried out, if it’s the last thing she ever does.

There has been speculation that the Vic may simply be absorbed into McGill University, which could greatly expand its medical school and potentially convert some buildings into student dormitories – an almost ideal evolution of the built environment at the corner of Pine and University.

But what of the Children’s?

If there was ever a hospital population to be segregated from the general population, it is undeniably children. Sick kids require a special environment, one ideally sealed from adult diseases, pain and suffering. A children’s hospital ought to foster the notion of recuperation, rehabilitation and optimism. I always thought the pediatric hospital and the birthing hospital should be in the same place – I can think of no other kind of hospital where the demand for a miracle be as high as in a children’s hospital, and can think of no better provider of miracles than a maternity ward. Our Children’s should be kept where it is – as it stands now it is an anchor of the Atwater/Shaughnessy Village area, and that area has already suffered the loss of the Reddy Women’s Hospital some years ago.

As for the General, it is unclear as to exactly what will happen here; since it will remain a level-1 trauma center and has a significant amount of space, it seems likely that it will be used to handle ‘overflow’, though how this will work is unclear to me. At the end of the day, the MUHC Superhospital is looking more and more like a highly specialized jack-of-all-trades teaching hospital. High specialization. Concentration. Education. Those are a lot of hats to wear simultaneously, and like anything else that tries to hard to be too many things to too many people, it will likely fail at its intended purpose. The Superhospital is probably going to be looked on as a super mistake, and the taxpayers will be left with a supersized bill. Once the project reaches the state of public derision and ridicule, much like the Olympic Stadium or Mirabel International, it will be seen pessimistically as little more than yet another recent failure of a once proud and successful people. Can we afford such malaise?

A modest proposal, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Perspective on the City { No.12 } – Phillips Square

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The King Edward VII Monument, (built 1914) in Phillips Square - work of the author, Summer 2009

Having a close friend who happens to live right next to Phillips Square has allowed me to experience this space with a fair degree of regularity. It has been a public space since Thomas Phillips granted the land to the city in 1842, though at that time it would have served as a focal point and common green for a residential area developing well to the West of the urban environment. The character of the space began to change in the late 19th century with the construction of Morgan’s department store (currently The Bay’s Montréal flagship store), followed by the construction of the Birks Store, the new Birks building and the Canada Cement Company building, seen in the background of the photo above.

The retail-commercial nature of this space became quite evident in the 1890s, though the Art Association of Montreal occupied a spot towards the Northeast corner of the square from 1877 until it moved to its Sherbrooke Street location and became the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1912.

The monument in the center of the square is dedicated to the “Roi Pacificateur” or the Pacifying King, somewhat ironically in 1914; the monument was unveiled just as the First World War was commencing. As is typical of public monuments of that era, its construction was sponsored by the Birks Family and was designed to impart various ‘kingly’ ideals and a specific vision of the king, the empire and the dominion. The figures at the base of the monument are highly symbolic in nature; among others – at rear a sculpture symbolizing Edward’s first act as king – to officially abolish the tradition of Catholic persecution by the British Royal Family. On the West side, the four majority nations of Canada – English, French, Scottish and Irish – a kind of Edwardian-era vision of multi-culturalism. The East side figures represent bounty and the progress through industry and education; and on the front – a figure representing ‘armed peace’. For more details, check out the City of Montréal’s website detailing public art, here.

I’ve always found the juxtaposition of the values presented in this monument and the reality of the values demonstrated by the services offered in and around this space rather striking. I think I’d prefer various institutions gathered around this space, something more akin to the way it would have been back before the monument was constructed. I suppose the square offers more-or-less direct access to Christ Church Cathedral and St. James Church, which are cultural venues by necessity, but it would be refreshing to see this space used for something aside from mere commerce. As an example – take a walk through this space on a Friday or Saturday night anytime after 9pm and you’ll see how it becomes a kind of gathering point for drunken fools. A real pity too given that it has also made Raoul Wallenberg Square unpleasant at times for similar reasons.

There’s a Canderel proposal for what to do with this space here:

Parking lot area right next to Phillips Square, behind the Hotel - not the work of the author

There proposal is this:

Canderel's proposal for a potential office tower at 1215 Phillips Square - not the work of the author

Not sure how this is going to affect the space in total, but given the trend towards densification of the urban environment, it makes sense that this area would become yet another pole for high-rise commercial office towers; perhaps its the necessary next phase of evolution? I’m not crazy about Canderel since they’re responsible for the Forum fiasco, but I’d be willing to forgive if this particular structure was externally and internally well-designed, environmentally sound, and served as a kind of hub for an expanded Underground City – namely, connecting the Quartier des Spectacles and Paper Hill/Little Dublin area with the retail and entertainment sector concentrated around McGill College. If it breeds better growth in this area, I’m all for it. I just hope it doesn’t end up looking like the Centre du Commerce Electronique!

What interests me is the prospect of linking McGill Métro station to Square-Victoria by means of underground tunnels running from 1080 Beaver Hall Hill to 500 René-Lévesque, then to this new structure and finally hooking up under the Square and further accessing the Bay, providing another North-South axis in the Underground City.

On a final note; consider the pathways you take through the city, and just how often you pass large open tracts of land which serve, either officially or unofficially, as meeting places and focal points. Our city happens to be almost galactic in nature, with multiple poles pulling a wide variety of activities towards them, providing links between a variety of defined-activity quarters.

Now is this good planning, a complete fluke, or the realization a past fluke was fortuitous and thus so happened to be worked into our urban tapestry?

History and Culture, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Urban Redevelopment, Worth reconsidering

Perspective on the City {No. 11} – the Bickerdyke Pier

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The Bickerdyke Pier during its Expo 67 heyday - not the work of the author

I can’t get enough of this picture.

From this perspective we see the Bickerdyke Pier in its Expo 67 glory. In the foreground is Habitat 67 with the assembly crane from Dominion Bridge Co. which demonstrated the work-in-progress aspect of Habitat, a big kick for visitors. Behind Habitat are the Man and the Community and Man and his Health pavilions, Labyrinthe, the Olympic House, Québec Industries Pavilion, the launch site for the Expo Hovercraft, the International Commerce pavilion, the Hospitality Centre and Man and his Music. Key arts and media pavilions were located next to the Place d’Acceuil (the building just above the middle of the pic, with the tent-like roof, next to the stadium with the train-line running out of it); including the Photography and Industrial Design pavilion, the Art Gallery, the Expo Theatre, the International Broadcasting pavilion and the News and Administration pavilion. The Art Gallery is now used by Lotto-Québec, while the theatre has since become Mel’s Cité-du-Cinéma and the Administration pavilion is now used by the Cité-du-Havre Corporation. Condos now stand where the Man and his Community and Labyrinthe pavilions once stood, while the Corby Distillery and a Canada Post sorting facility occupy the former site of the Autostade, which in turn occupied the site of the former Goose Village. Near the top right corner of the picture, you can see the vast parking lot built on land created by piling massive quantities of garbage along the shoreline and then paving it over. After its brief tenure as a parking lot, this space was then transformed into the Victoria STOLport, a short-take-off-and-landing airport similar to Toronto’s Billy Bishop serving a largely business and political crowd. The idea never really ‘took-off’ as it were, and the site was then developed into the Montréal Technoparc, one of at least three I can think of in this city.

As you look down the length of the jetty you’ll notice the Expo Express train and the station near Habitat 67. Consider that this space would have been Expo’s introduction, the appetizer if you will before reaching the spectacular national and thematic pavilions built on the park islands. Consider as well the type of pavilions located here in comparison to what would lie beyond. Note that while the area contained some rather interesting and attractive architecture, it was certainly muted when compared to the other Expo super structures. Consider the centralization of key services in this area and the general-taste atmosphere of the site, its proximity to the city and CBD, not to mention the pairing of communication and transportation infrastructure in the same place. Finally, notice how clean, manicured and modern this space is. Today much of the Pier and the park islands are overgrown, especially the former Place des Nations.

It’s amazing how quickly large tracts of the city can be temporarily ultra-modernized, and then fall back into a more natural state almost as quickly.