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| 500 feet of green space should be built atop the Decarie at Queen Mary |
The city knew it needed a north-south route and looked at every possibility from the Main, to St. Denis, to Cote-des-Neiges and Cavendish before sacrificing the once-glorious Decarie strip for the route.
The ultimate insult was that the expressway was left uncovered and nobody has been able to put enough pressure on the government to cover it since.
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| 15,000 sq ft of green could easily be made at Upper Lachine |
The usual explanation for not putting a roof on the Decarie is that the value of the land created wouldn't justify the cost of contstruction.
Land value has increased considerably since that argument was first made, however.
But rather than covering the whole thing immediately, small segments of the expressway could get a lid for the purposes of alleviating the shortage of green space in that part of town.
A simple lawn does not carry much weight, therefore the supporting pillars would be relatively easy and cheap to install.
One section should cover 500-feet over the Decarie just above Queen Mary. This would be considered reparations for demolition of Snowdon Junction and could be seen as tossing a bone to that community which was forced to sacrifice while the school down the road was spared. It would also put a nice lawn in front of the borough offices and the Snowdon Theatre, a lovely building which deserves to be celebrated.
The other green roof which would be quite easy to create would sit between Upper Lachine and the tracks. The structure could be held up partially by those existing bridges and would add 15,000 square feet of green space to a place that is currently starved of green space (thanks partially to the Projet Montreal councillor who greenlighted the paving of a large section of Oxford Park). The St. Raymond's borough currently has only 1/10 th of the standard amount of green space and this would help alleviate that shortage.
CDN-NDG is not run by a Project Montreal council. At that time it was 5 Union and 1 Project. And although he did support it, it wouldn't have mattered how McQueen voted. The park would have been paved over. The whole council is to blame for the Oxford Park fiasco.
ReplyDeletePeter McQueen actively embraced the paving project, offered to sacrifice that piece of green space without asking anybody in the area. He just unilaterally decided to obliterate 14,000 square feet of green space in an already green-embattled area.
ReplyDeleteHe even agreed to fence the whole thing off, which would even have been more ghetto than the two awful fences that ended up coming with the monstrosity. (Would be interested to know if the contractors were paid for fences that never got put in).
The group asking for the court, something called Jeunes Leaders NDG, would have been happy with a court anywhere in NDG. There was never any need to put it there, or even sacrifice green space anywhere at all.
The other councillors voted in favour of this nonsense but they didn't even know what it was about, it wasn't their backyards.
Someone like Marvin Rotrand would never have agreed to something like this in his area, he regularly shoots down such requests.
I know this stuff because I interviewed the parties personally about this bizarre turn of events.
So this anti-green park paving blunder is on Peter unfortunately and he's stuck still defending the de-greening the park. So that's a real sad headshaker.
Covering the trench at Jean Talon would give SPCA dogs a much-needed run.
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right in saying the Decarie Expressway cut out the heart of the West End and left an open wound through the neighbourhood.
ReplyDeleteWhile covering the section from Queen Mary north to Isabella would be nice, covering it south of Queen Mary to Cote St. Luc would also be a major improvement.
The Queen Mary to Isabella stretch still has some commercial life especially on the east side. The section from Queen Mary to Cote St. Luc however, is relatively a dead zone, especially on the east side.
When that stretch of Decarie was roughly only as wide as the south bound service road is today, there were stores on both sides practically all the way to Cote St. Luc. People who lived on the east side could easily cross the street to shop at stores on the west side.
As soon as the expressway went in, all the stores (along with many residential units) on the east side were demolished. The stores on the west side never really recovered either because everyone on the east side was now separated. If you had to walk to Cote St. Luc or Snowdon Avenue to cross, you may as well just walk to Queen Mary and get what you needed there. And that's exactly what happened.
Suddenly those duplexes whose sides now border Decarie and the apartment buildings along the street would certainly go up in value.
In Bill Conrod's book, "Memories of Snowdon in the 50s" so many people refer to the joys of cruising the shops along Queen Mary Rd. and Decarie Blvd. in their youth. A tiny greenspace close by would be a pleasant place to reminisce, especially if the Snowdon Theatre kept its familiar architecture.
ReplyDeleteMacDonald Boy
All of these reminiscences and "why don't they's" have already been well-covered in earlier sections of this blog and elsewhere, but until we can get decent municipal and provincial governments to smarten up and do the right thing for once, we will all be stuck having to tolerate the "Decarie Fume Pit".
ReplyDeleteThe Royal Bank building being torn down is the oldest memory I can muster from my brain… At the time, we lived on Queen Mary right next to old the private streetcar right of way.
ReplyDelete(Who else remembers that, when it opened, Décarie had a gravel bottom with two 2-lane asphalt strips???)
I remember in the 1970’s a project to cover up the hole between Queen-Mary and côte St-Luc, but nothing ever came of it.
It’s interesting to note the contrast in which Décarie and Ville-Marie were received… In the east, it was mostly tenant housing and the numerous displaced tenants were able to raise a ruckus with the help of unions, whereas Décarie in NDG knocked-down duplexes, and the expropriated residents (I would say half of them…) simply got themselves houses in the West-Island, and the tenants were likely rich enough to be able to relocate without too much trouble, hence the lack of protests…
But, again, in the early 1960’s, cars were much more the rage than after the 1970’s oil crisis…
I grew up on the east side of Decarie, between Queen Mary and Cote St. Luc. Our house ended up on the corner of the Decarie service road, after the expressway was built.
ReplyDeleteFor years, our neighbour met with gov't electees Marvin Rotrand and George Springate to try and get a noise baffle of some sort erected over or beside the expressway.
Nothing was ever done.
Forget greenspace. Cover from Queen Mary to at least Isabella and put PARKING for crying out loud.
ReplyDelete"Cover from Queen Mary to at least Isabella and put PARKING for crying out loud."
ReplyDeleteYou are aware there's a metro line running right along the strip, right?
Fast forward to 2045...."60 people were killed today when Decarie park collapsed onto the Decarie expressway. This is just the latest in a series of deadly failures of structures built during the long decades of Montreal's runaway municipal and construction corruption. As per usual, a commision is being formed to investigate the accident and find a way to blame nobody"
ReplyDelete"You are aware there's a metro line running right along the strip, right?"
ReplyDeleteCan we park in it?
Howdy!
ReplyDeleteGo talk to Luc Durand
http://www.oaq.com/larchitecture/actualite/evenements/vue_detaillee/article/exposition_monuments_1959_2012.html
"You are aware there's a metro line running right along the strip, right?"
ReplyDelete"Can we park in it?"
Hopefully you understand that the whole point of that comment was to use public transportation, as there is perfect access to this location by the metro. The LAST thing the area needs is parking, this is not Laval...
"You are aware there's a metro line running right along the strip, right?"
ReplyDeleteCan we park in it?"
Have you ever heard of using transit or walking at least some of the time? Or do you use your car for every single errand? In other words, why do wish to have 95,000 parking spots in a part of town very well served by transit?
As Zeke mentioned: Urban Planner Luc Durand tried to sell his elaborate plans for covering the expressway to whoever would listen (or not) during the 80s and 90s. He came to public meetings and wrote articles. Some considered him a visionary and others a bit silly.
ReplyDeleteAs a home owner living 1/2 a block in from Décarie at the corner of Lacombe I can confirm that parking is a BIG problem in the area. I have a driveway but at least a couple times a week someone park in front of my driveway because they have no manners and can’t find a place to park.There are shops and restaurants on Décarie, people drive to go them - maybe there should not be shops and maybe everyone should bicycle or take public transit - but we should deal with reality and improve the urban environment for everyone! Not serve some abstract ideology.A mix of parking and green space a good compromise that help everyone?
ReplyDeleteWhile an alternative plan (surely buried somewhere in the city's archives) to have the Decarie Expressway run completely underground for a large part of its distance unfortunately never became reality, there were in fact proposals to have at least some strategic sections covered over in addition to the short tunnel beneath the N.D.G. Catholic church to the south of Monkland Avenue.
ReplyDeleteOn page 19 of the Montreal Star for April 11, 1964, "New Route...", feast your disbelieving eyes on an artist's conception of Decarie just north of Queen Mary Road where significant parking space was conceived for at least 200 plus cars to serve the potential patrons of adjacent commercial businesses, restaurants, etc. Sadly, this idea never came to pass, either.
The Montreal Star for May 30, 1964, page 11 "Shoppers Face New Hazard" outlines both a 400-foot covering section north of Queen Mary and a 300-foot covering section south of Queen Mary which would have been a significant improvement over what currently exists--nowhere for people to park other than on side streets and along a short section of Queen Mary's median west of Decarie.
One may safely assume that the rush to complete both Decarie and the construction of other local highway connections simultaneously underway in time for the opening of Expo67 prevented Snowdon Junction from becoming more user-friendly as it ought to have been.
Be that as it may, considering how many other expensive city infrastructure projects have been completed in the decades SINCE Expo67, one has to wonder why the necessary improvements to Snowdon Junction have repeatedly been ignored despite countless election promises and engineers' proposals.
Incidentally, while Cavendish Boulevard was at that time initially under serious consideration as the alternative to the Decarie Expressway being the main north-south connection to what would eventually lead to the Turcot Interchange and Route 720, one may safely assume that the inevitable demolition required to run the Decarie Expressway through much of N.D.G.'s residential area must surely have generated cries of nimbyism by residents of Cote St. Luc horrified to be likewise affected, resulting in the town of Cote St. Luc backtracking from its initial enthusiasm for a Cavendish Connection. Seems like they STILL haven't gotten over it.
Photos of the results of residential demolition along Decarie can be seen on page 35 of the Montreal Star for September 26, 1964 and on page 41 of the Montreal Star for October 3, 1964.