The biggest of these projects is the 8 million square foot triangle north of at Victoria which mostly developer Sam Scalia has been organizing. His brother Joseph is also on board. There will be something like 3,500 new housing units.
The development coincides with a decision to rezone the area from industrial to commercial-residential, always interesting when that happens.
Samcon, which is what Sam Scalia calls himself, started in 1991, bad times in the real estate biz, and doing peanuts, dealing about eight condo units per year. The tides changed in 1996 when he sold 60 on Hotel de Ville and Mount Royal and by 2002 he was moving about 250 a year. Within a few years he was all over town putting up condos in Cote St Luc, the Point, etc.
In the past some sketchy people with a lot of time on their hands pushed Montreal to adopt a nonsensical rule that dictates that 15 percent of such developments have to be "low cost housing." In at least part of this development some official pushed the developer of upping that to 25 percent, so you'll have a city councillors to thank for what will be a giant house of shame nearby. The city also boasts that the development will favorize public transit users, which is code for "we didn't build enough parking spots," although I don't know the numbers. So yeah, the city keeps growing and seems like a good thing, although I'll really miss that empty field.
Why is is a bad thing that poor people should have available to them housing that they can actually afford to live in? A mix of incomes, stations, occupations is ideal. But knowing the construction industry around here it'll be shoddily built, shoddily managed and generally shoddy. Big developments like this are usually a bad idea but I'm all for an actual neighborhood there. If only they'd build something resembling a place people want to live in where the inhabitants could live their lives without having to rely on cars or deps to get to work and buy their food. This is a good location for something like that and I have no doubt that what's being built is nothing close to it.
ReplyDeleteDidn't build enough parking spots?
http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/02/11/parking-minimums-make-nyc-housing-more-expensive-nyu-report-finds/
What a waste of space! How about a place for people to live? This isn't Mississauga, we're talking about a part of Montreal that would be very densely populated that's close to the Metro. Any chance for folks to rid themselves of their gas-guzzling, pay-sucking cars is a good thing.
You know poor people? They can't afford them. They have to take public transit. Can you imagine having to live without a car but having no other way to get around? Of course you can't because you've fused with your car to the point that life without it is impossible.
Not all of us are so fortunate as to live the American Dream. You know what's awesome? Being able to walk to the store! And not have to worry about parking! And having some money left over after gas, taxes, registration and insurance to feed your children!
You know what's depressing? Large chunks of what would be a vibrant city turned into expanses of boring, pointless, expensive, destructive, ugly, life-killing asphalt.
Also, I'd like to know what you mean by house of shame. This isn't a Corbusian inner-city project, it's a mix if incomes.
Hi Leg, By forcing developers to put in lotsa lotsa poor-people housing, they're inhibiting building and without building you've got a shortage of apartments, and that, in turn leads to higher prices. Back in the 80s there was tons of apartments and no government meddling, prices were very low.
ReplyDeleteAnd sorry but people with children need cars. Being anti-car is being anti-family. Sorry but that's the truth of it.
Without cars the city doesn't function, your plumber ain't gonna get his ass to your house on the metro, and just project that onto any other professional undertaking.
I don't think we disagree on everything, I respect your passion but I'd like to some pigeonhole parking in that area. If there's insufficient parking you'll get people circling the blocks looking for spots like the guy wrote about in "The High Price of Free Parking."
As for Le Corbusier, one of his ideas was to build super tall buildings and put people in them. If we allowed more of that, we'd be able to use less land and devote it to green space. I agree that there's way too much concrete around town. I wrote about the tragic loss of green space in my area last week, at the hands of a self-proclaimed proponent of green space, oh the irony!
For this subject, I'll begin by re-using my intro to the topic about Montreal's vanishing green spaces...
ReplyDeleteThe notion of creating a better neighbourhood with ever more density by raising existing apartment building height restrictions and adding more high-rises to the mix has already proven to be a disastrous failure in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, for example (Google Cabrini-Green and Pruitt-Igoe for a wake-up call). Too many residents, fewer parking spaces, more traffic, more crime, and the downward spiral begins.
By the way, I've mentioned elsewhere that the empty lot on the northeast corner of Jean Talon and Victoria still exists due to the fact that it is directly over part of "Cote des Neiges Creek" long ago placed in large sewer pipes and thus a potential hazard for any excavation and construction.
As for low-cost housing: it's only fair that everyone in a community have access and not just the rich.
What exactly is "poor"? No, not only the "welfare bums", but anyone really who may have had a great job once but lost it due to economic conditions, broken families with deadbeat, non-alimony-paying dads, any many others. Regardless, it is no crime to be poor.
For a city resident, owning a car today is really not worth the headache. I drove for ten years and that was enough. I don't miss it one bit. Even if everyone owned an electric car right now, there would still be parking problems, overly-high insurance premiums, and all the rest of the nonsense.
If you're a suburbanite--tough luck. Live there--work there.
And finally: condos are a racket. They're great for exploitative "developers' who want a quick buck but no responsibility as a landlord. You move in and you pay for everything. Bad neighbours? Too bad! Shoddy construction? Try selling it!
It should also be mentioned that this area around Jean Talon and Victoria is only a preliminary step for the upcoming and long-awaited revitalization of the Blue Bonnets/Hippodrome sector that many may remember was sold to the city by the province (or was it vice versa) for half its real value some years back.
ReplyDeleteWal-Mart, Burger King, and others got in early, but the real work is yet to come with road extensions into Cote St. Luc and a proposed mix of residential and commercial projects--perhaps even an AMT railway station.
Some fool suggested another casino be built there since it would be virtually located in the centre of the island of Montreal, but wiser politicians have correctly vetoed that idea.
Historical experience elsewhere has proven that casinos too close to residential areas breed crime, which is why our existing one is isolated on Ile Notre Dame, and this certainly should never be forgotten. We have only to remember how long it took to work all of that out in the first place.
For those unaware, the casino in Melbourne is near downtown with tales of problem gamblers threatening casino staff in the parking lot, demanding their money back and other such horror stories.