Royalmount Mall - bring it on!

   A Montreal TV news report from about 1995 featured an intense elderly old man vowing to lie down in the middle of Cavendish Blvd and get run over by traffic if plans ever went forward to extend the street to its logical limit, Highway 40.
   The old-timer personified a widespread not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitude that has made changing anything in that part of town more drawn out and complicated than a Mexican soap opera.
   Residents of the Cote St. Luc and surrounding areas have long led odd campaigns against just about any change that gets proposed. 
   In the 1960s one woman protested against a bus route going near her home as she claimed the vibrations would disrupt the foundations of her home.
   Metro planning officials never dared propose a metro in Cote St. Luc, as residents were entirely unopen to the concept of stragglers and potential thieves accessing their area.
   Similar torture erupted with the proposed conversion of the Meadowbrook golf course.
   Others panicked about a cell phone transmission site in 1995.
   The pattern is not necessarily borne of wisdom.
   The municipality that once opposed the Cavendish Boulevard extension is now begging for the road extended, as traveling to the areas remains onerous to motorists who all zoom down Fleet to get into anywhere that matters. 
   Now residents in the same area are at it again, spreading fear and panic about a nearby development in Town of Mount Royal, known as the Royalmount Mall.
   Their main argument is that increased traffic might add a little time on driving around the area and on the Decarie Expressway.
   However studies have shown the obvious: traffic means that an area is bustling and that money, jobs, economic prosperity are present in the area. As one economist noted:

    Traffic is the sign of a healthy and burgeoning economy. Like blood flowing through the arteries of our bodies, traffic is the flow of people and goods around the country. More traffic means there are more people, more jobs, and more prosperity resulting in people buying more vehicles, travelling more for work and pleasure, and buying more things that need delivering.

   Some predict the Royalmount Mall will bring disastrous results with its 200 retail boutiques, a skating rink, office towers, restaurants, movie theatre, aquarium and 6000 condos to an unused plot of land at the top of the Decarie.
   Entirely overlooked will be the massive upside of having such resources within reach of the West End.
   Detractors predict that the project will hurt merchants throughout the city and undermine existing concert spaces. This narrative overlooks the fact that those existing businesses likely did the same to their competitors once upon a time as well and would do it again it need be.
  Elected officials in neighbouring municipalities have vowed to do their nothing to encourage access to the mall, certainly partly out of jealousy for the tax dollars that will flow into Town of Mount Royal rather than Montreal.   
   CDN/NDG certainly wishes it had pulled off something as impressive in the Blue Bonnets site.
   Many would like the powers-that-be to somehow block the project but as one commenter from the mtlurb board added:   

  A private investor spent millions of dollars, acquiring land legally, and developing a project alongside the urban development guidelines. You just can't change the rules of the game like that - and ask a private developer to change his plans without any sort of quid pro quo. It's upside down in this province. If you don't like the guidelines, change them for the next project before it gets to an advanced stage. 

   Many Montrealers recall a time when prosperity in this overlooked city seemed unthinkable and the sudden onslaught of construction cranes has caused shock and apprehension.
   But in fact a golden age is dawning in Montreal and exciting new construction is part of a civic resurgence that will be enjoyed by all.
 
See also:  Cavendish Extension timeline: how they didn't get 'er done