Category Archives: Scenes from the City

Montreal’s Central Business District in Evolution

The latest additions to Montreal's skyline taking shape - June 17th 2015
The latest additions to Montreal’s skyline taking shape – June 17th 2015
Overdale, we hardly knew ye...
Overdale, we hardly knew ye…
Lafontaine House, a still uncertain future...
Lafontaine House, a still uncertain future…
The new urban chasm
The new urban chasm
Tour des Canadiens de Montréal taking shape in background, with L'Avenue immediately in front of it and Rockabella in foreground at left
Tour des Canadiens de Montréal taking shape in background, with L’Avenue immediately in front of it and Rockabella in foreground at left
Icone Tower I with base of Rockabella II in foreground at right
Icone Tower I with base of Rockabella II in foreground at right
The west side of 1250 René Lévesque framed by new construction
The west side of 1250 René Lévesque framed by new construction

Panorama of new downtown towers - June 17 2015

Mehta, Mahler and the Maison Symphonique de Montréal

Not Mehta or the OSM, but Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Close enough…

Confession: I was neither familiar with Mahler’s Third Symphony, nor the city’s new concert hall, until last night. I know… for shame.*

First off, seeing Zubin Mehta conduct the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal was a treat in and of itself (read Claude Gingras’ spot-on review in La Presse). Mehta was the conductor of the OSM from 1960 to 1967, at the time a major step in his early career and a coup for our city. Mehta then went on to become the musical director and chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic and later became Musical Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic. He is one of the greatest and most renown living conductors, and the thrill of the experience was palpable amongst concert-goers and musicians alike.

Second, the OSM, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, the OSM’s women’s choir and Montreal and McGill children’s choirs did a superb job performing such a demanding and complex piece. The choice of Mahler’s Third Symphony was brilliant, especially given that this was a benefit concert, as (in my opinion) it allowed the OSM to demonstrate its versatility, not to mention the excellent acoustic qualities of the new concert hall. Further, as The Gazette’s Arthur Kaptainis points out, it’s the kind of piece that will appeal to the critical and impress the unfamiliar. I fall in the latter category, though I’ve been developing a greater appreciation for classical music of late.

Third, if the purpose of Tuesday night’s performance was to encourage locals to go to the symphony more often, mission accomplished… you won’t have to tell me twice. What I saw was a world-class orchestra eager to impress a living legend, and in so doing brought the house to its feet. The performance concluded with what felt like a ten minute standing ovation.

That said…

This was my first experience with the new concert hall and I’m feeling a bit let down.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a fine building; it’s comfortable, modern, well-lit and sounds fantastic too.

However, on the outside it’s dull to the point of being insulting to the OSM and citizens alike. Put it another way, the building’s overall aesthetic qualities don’t match the quality of the orchestra performing within. To me it looks more like Place des Arts’ music school, or a UQAM pavilion, than the home of a major symphony orchestra.

The interior of the concert hall is elegant though the ornamentation seems to me to be trying too hard to be postmodern and ‘fun’. The general aesthetic of the whole construction is of stripped down minimalism common to most projects involving Quebec government funding of late, and while it fits within the greater scheme of both Place des Arts and the Quartier des Spectacles, I still feel it’s too much of the same thing.

Perhaps my discomfort with the new concert hall is in the vein of medium and message being less than congruent; I can’t imagine a tourist would happen upon the concert hall without prompting (i.e. the location isn’t evident, being somewhat on the backside of Place des Arts) and there’s little about the building which says unequivocally what purpose it serves. It doesn’t invite the spontaneous engagement with the city’s culture, and doesn’t say anything about our own cultural values either. This is not to say that all buildings should necessarily be so explicit, but I don’t think it would hurt in this particular case.

After all, we want the OSM (and the other classical music ensembles who makes use of the space) to be cherished by the citizenry and further want a concert hall that is both distinct and recognizable for citizens and tourists alike.

It would also be nice for the most successful elements of Place des Arts to be eventually ‘unpackaged’ and re-distributed elsewhere in the city. The Quartier des Spectacles is without a doubt a successful (though somewhat contrived) urban branding initiative, but it would be unwise to distinguish one particular neighbourhood as cultural nucleus. Disingenuous too. Most of the housing within immediate proximity of Place des Arts isn’t exactly within the price range of most local artists.

In any event, I think it’s just a matter of time before the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal seeks out a new location, and there’s been talk of building an opera house since the Drapeau Era. Perhaps a larger and more distinct concert hall would follow. Were this to happen, new venues should go up outside the Quartier des Spectacles, though not outside the central core of the city.

Incidentally, I think the old Forum site at Atwater would be a great location for a large performance venue… although you’d run into the same problem trying to balance out the various requirements of what would need to be a multi-faceted, somewhat multi-purpose facility. But I don’t know enough to argue whether an opera hall could easily double as home to the OSM and serve the needs of touring Broadway productions simultaneously.

Closing notes: the interior aesthetic of the concert hall, from the audience’s perspective, is marred by the red neon emergency exit signs. It clashes with the woodwork and seems almost like an afterthought designed and installed by hurried bureaucrats. I know it’s absolutely necessary to have emergency signage, but surely it could have been a bit more subtle?

On the other side of the spectrum, the artist’s entrance at the corner of Boul. de Maisonneuve and St. Urbain has all the charm and intimacy of a loading dock office at a pharmaceutical company’s distribution warehouse. This is where the stars of the show enter the building, yet again, their entrance seems like an afterthought, far removed from the main entrance and wholly inappropriate in context given just how unimaginative it actually is.

* (In truth, now that I think about it, I had heard the symphony before, though had forgotten. I won’t forget it now and encourage you to take a listen. It’s well worth it.)

Montreal Photo of the Day – May 4th 2015

Watering the Skyscrapers - May 3rd 2015
Watering the Skyscrapers – May 3rd 2015

Taken from Saint Jacques and Rue de la Montagne.

From left to right: you can just see the penthouse of Place Ville Marie behind the fifteen-floor tower of the Romanesque Revival styled Windsor Station (capped with emblematic green copper roof). Next is the Marriott Chateau Champlain (with iconic half-moon convex windows giving the impression, it’s often been said, of an immense cheese grater), and then the Place du Canada office tower. Rising behind Place du Canada is 1000 de la Gauchetiere West, tallest skyscraper in Montreal and one of several postmodern skyscrapers erected in the city in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Below the tower, in the photo’s lower right hand corner, an elderly citizen dutifully waters the tower’s foundation :)

No no no…

She was one of a handful of people out and about in the community garden put in place over the Ville Marie Tunnel. According to new development plans released from the public consultation office, this space is a priority for redevelopment (basically, the aim is draw the central business district down from its current ‘southern border’ at Saint Antoine to better integrate the city with new residential developments in Griffintown).

Of note, the master plan released by the City of Montreal aims to focus development investment in an area roughly the same size as the current Quartier International, mirrored along the north-south axis formed by the Bonaventure Expressway, whose viaduct is supposed to be eliminated in favour of a wide, ground-level urban boulevard. The same plan calls for a linear park to stretch over the Ville Marie Expressway tunnel from Guy to Jean D’Estrées, which will eliminate this community garden while maintaining the area as green space.

While the plan is encouraging (in that it aims to focus development in an area that would benefit immensely from redevelopment, and further sew up the still open wound created by the highway tunnel project back in the 1960s and 1970s) there’s not much in terms of major services for so many new residents. Community gardening is just one component. Some kind of local public school is going to need to be provided, a public library branch would be nice, not to mention a CLSC, CPE(s) and various community and cultural spaces would be great too.

I don’t think we should wait to see what kind of people move into the neighbourhood over the next decade or so. Better to provide the bare minimum to support a vibrant and diverse community, rather than simply letting market forces figure it all out. If anything, the market may adjust its offering over time if the city came out first and identified how it will most directly support families in the area. Not all families will be keen to live north of Griffintown, but some will, and the centrality of the location would support families living in adjoining established communities downtown. In other words, if it’s in our best interest to have communities with diverse types of residents (e.g. singles, young couples, couples with young children, re-located empty nesters etc.), the city needs to prepare for just that level of diversity and ensure the range of core community services are provided. This is how the public sector can best stimulate private sector investment – by establishing the foundations of a veritable community.

Montreal Photo of the Day – April 20th 2015

Peel & De la Gauchetiere - April 2015

From left to right, Windsor Station, 1250 Boul. René Lévesque (the tower with the prominent spire), St. George’s Anglican Church, Place Laurentienne and the CIBC Tower (which also has a prominent spire).

Photo taken from the ‘skywalk’ over Rue de la Gauchetiere, bridging Place du Canada (public park) with Place du Canada (office/hotel complex).

Montreal Photo of the Day – April 16th 2015

Reflections of Construction - Montreal, April 2015

Taken from Basin Street in Griffintown, from left to right you can see the Cité du Commerce Electronique, construction cranes around both the Roccabella (tower one) and Tour des Canadiens de Montréal, 1250 Boul. René Lévesque Ouest, the CIBC Tower, Place Laurentienne and the Deloitte Tower at far right.

In the foreground land is being prepared for a new condo project, though I can’t recall which one.

Griffintown was arguably Montreal’s first ‘ethnic neighbourhood’, becoming the home to Montreal’s Irish working class beginning in the early 19th century. It would remain as such until about the time of the Second World War, at which point the local Irish community was somewhat replaced by successive waves of immigration – notably Eastern European Jews, Italians and Ukrainians. In its 19th century form the area was populated mainly by general labourers of Irish-Catholic descent who had taken up residence immediately adjacent to where the majority worked – first dredging the Lachine Canal, then building the Victoria Bridge, and then in the multitude of industries that popped up at the intersection of the port, canal, bridge and vast rail yards.

Griffintown was also the first community annexed by the city prior to the introduction of the tram system.

Life in the Griff began a rather drastic change in the late 1950s with the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, which in turn rendered the Lachine Canal obsolete, allowing Great Lakes shipping to bypass Montreal and the industrial port that had developed along the banks of the Lachine Canal over the preceding century. Perhaps as a result of an acrimonious relationship between Mayor Jean Drapeau and the City Councillor for St. Ann’s Ward, Frank Hanley (who for a while was also simultaneously the area’s MNA), Griffintown was rezoned for entirely industrial purposes, and slum-clearance initiatives popular at the time resulted in widespread expropriations and demolition. The construction of the Bonaventure and Ville Marie Expressways around the same time further isolated the area’s residents from the rest of the city, and by 1970 the parish church, St. Ann’s, was razed. By 1971 the population was just over 800 and it wouldn’t grow by much for the next thirty plus years.

I would argue the biggest mistake made was pushing highways through to the centre of the city, but what’s done is done. Griffintown shrank into virtual non-existence, it’s Irish heritage largely lost. I remember walking around the area about a decade ago, on a lovely summer evening no less, completely astounded that an area so close to the city proper could be so devoid of human life.

Fortunately the last decade has been a bit kinder to Griffintown. The elimination of the vast CN stockyards between Saint Jacques and Notre Dame West in the late 1970s resulted in significant housing construction (mostly townhouses) in the 1980s, coinciding with the Orange Line’s western branch extension from Bonaventure, beginning in 1980. The successful rehabilitation of the former stockyards would encourage additional development projects meant to stimulate the rehabilitation of the area (such as the Labatt Stadium proposal) though this project ultimately fell through.

I’d argue it was the conversion of the former O’Keefe brewery into the main campus of the École de technologie supérieur in 1997, as well as the development of the Cité du Multimédia around the same time, that ultimately provided the foundation for Griffintown’s renaissance as an urban neighbourhood. ÉTS brought in students and anchored the Little Burgundy side of the Notre Dame West commercial artery, and the Cité du Multimédia wound up employing about 6,000 people who take in an average of $73,000 annually. This made redeveloping the former industrial spaces and parking lots between Notre Dame and the canal into residential properties a potentially lucrative endeavour.

Today the area’s population stands between 6,500 and 7,000 with more to come. Just about every open lot is to be converted into condos, and new businesses and services have moved into the area.

Whether Griffintown becomes a neighbourhood in the truest sense of the word is conditional on both the city and province investing in socio-cultural infrastructure – public schools, a CLSC, community and cultural centres, perhaps even a public library branch, not to mention adequate parks and playgrounds.

That remains to be seen.

The World’s Largest Holiday Inn

A rendering of the new Holiday Inn, to be located at René Lévesque and Lucien L'Allier on the  Overdale block
A rendering of the new Holiday Inn, to be located at René Lévesque and Lucien L’Allier on the Overdale block

If you’ve been walking down René Lévesque around the Bell Centre of late, you’ve doubtless noticed our city’s in the midst of a building boom.

And it’s not all condos either. The new Deloitte Tower, located between the Bell Centre and ‘surrounded’ by Windsor Station, has topped out and should open later this year, marking the first major office tower built in Montreal since the Cité du Commerce Electronique (CCE herein) was completed just over a decade ago (and about half a block away).

And just on the other side of Lucien l’Allier street from the CCE is a big gaping whole in the ground where our city’s new Holiday Inn will soon stand.

At first glance of the rendering (shown above) you might think this city’s about to be graced by the world’s largest reasonably-priced hotel, but alas the hotel will only occupy the first ten floors (and offer 250 rooms). The other thirty floors are intended for high-end rental apartments (you’ll also notice the rendering doesn’t show the full height of the intended project).

Hard to believe what used to be the site of a dilapidated parking garage/ 24-hour brochette restaurant may, within three years, be a forty floor tower with hundreds of residents on top of a full service hotel.

And here’s something to consider. Just two blocks away stands one of the last major hotel towers built in this city, the Sheraton Centre, completed in 1982 after being left abandoned (and half built) for six years.

It was originally intended to be the world’s largest Holiday Inn.

This was supposed to be the world's largest Holiday Inn
This was supposed to be the world’s largest Holiday Inn

In the 1960s and 1970s several high-rise hotel towers popped up in Montreal, most notably the Chateau Champlain across from Windsor Station (originally built for Canadian Pacific Hotels to rival the Canadian National-owned Queen Elizabeth Hotel, itself adjacent to CN’s Central Station). The Hotel des Gouverneurs at Place Dupuis, the OMNI Montreal on Sherbrooke and the former Delta adjacent to the Tour de la Bourse are just a few other examples of the same basic idea – luxury high-rise hotel towers that looked often too much like the office towers they adjoined).

In addition to the Chateau Champlain, Canadian Pacific also owned the Laurentian Hotel, located at Peel and René Lévesque and offering 1,004 rooms at some of the lowest respectable rates in the city. The Laurentian was prized by business travellers, budget travellers and perhaps most importantly, the city’s convention bureau, simply because it was a genuinely nice and inexpensive hotel in a choice location. The hotel returned about $1.8 million to CP annually in profit during the time they owned and operated it, between 1969 and 1976.

Canadian Pacific demolished the Laurentian two years later.

It was a move that baffled people. The hotel was large, fireproof, only thirty years old at the time of its demolition. It had been remodelled as recently as 1975-76 and was still popular and respected when it closed its doors for good.

So why demolish it?

It turns out that the competition between Canadian Pacific and Canadian National took an interesting turn once CN completed the Place Ville Marie project in 1962. If CN could remodel a massive section of the urban core, surely CP could do it too.

And so CP planned an absolutely massive project intended to rival and mirror Place Ville Marie. It was to be more than twice as large in surface area and feature a sixty floor office tower as centre-piece, and a major national bank (in this case the Bank of Montreal, rival to the Royal Bank over at PVM Tower I) as main tenant. An additional tower would serve as CP’s headquarters, and other towers were envisioned as well, notably a luxury apartment tower and a luxury hotel tower to round things out.

So why demolish the Laurentian Hotel?

There was considerable public opposition to the plan, yet Canadian Pacific argued nonetheless that in order to fully realize their vision they would have to clear out the space of its existing buildings (including Windsor Station). They said the Laurentian Hotel blocked CP-owned lands further west from access to (what was then known as) Dominion Square (today’s Place du Canada/Dorchester Square), and thus had to be eliminated so that the new project could have a prestigious address, and access to one of the city’s most iconic urban public spaces (for a complete analysis, check out Michael Fish’s essay on the public fight to save the Laurentian Hotel from the wrecking ball).

And so despite considerable and vocal public opposition Canadian Pacific demolished the Laurentian in 1978. A pity too; it was one of three prominent Streamline Moderne styled buildings built in Montreal in the 1930s and 1940s designed by Charles Davis Goodman (the other two being the Jewish General Hospital’s main pavilion and Ben’s Delicatessen, also since demolished).

At the same time the Laurentian came down, the hotel CP said would replace it stood abandoned across the street. The railroad had managed to convince Holiday Inn to build the largest hotel in its chain here in Montreal, in time for the 1976 Olympics. It was intended to be a 900-room luxury hotel tower and was to have featured multiple exterior elevators (a design quirk fashionable at the time). The project was estimated to cost $30 million, and Holiday Inn had spent that much by the fall of 1976, with only a partially completed tower to show for it and too late to profit off the tourism boost of the Olympiad. The company realized it was unlikely they’d quickly re-coup their investment, and the political and economic situation in Montreal towards the end of 1976 wasn’t optimistic to say the least.

And so they walked.

It would take another $20 million before Sheraton finally completed the tower and outfitted the hotel six years later, and to this day the building seems boring and otherwise out of place (if it weren’t for the fact that it’s part of a cluster of tall buildings).

Despite this and other major setbacks (the Bank of Montreal pulled out in the mid-1970s, opting instead to put the bank’s operations in the tallest building in Toronto, First Canadian Place), CP pressed on with its plan to build a massive office and residential complex on the 14-acres or so of land it owned west of Peel.

And ultimately nothing came of it. After acquiring 14-acres of land, CP would change course in the 1980s, first selling the site of the former Laurentian Hotel to be developed into the new head office of the Laurentian Bank, and then selling off the rest of their land holdings piecemeal over the subsequent thirty some-odd years.

The lasting effect of CP’s plan was a lot of undeveloped or under-utilized land immediately west of the city’s Central Business District from the late 1970s until quite recently. To put things in perspective, between 1978 and 1987 you could see the entirety of Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral (which is on the east side of Place du Canada) from as far west as Guy Street. In other words, for nine years there wasn’t much more than open lots, a few abandoned buildings and several large parking lots stretching half a kilometre along the south side of René Lévesque.

Montreal 1978
Montreal 1978

In a curious way I find all that open space impressive in its desolation. A massive hole in the urban fabric.

In any event, all that said, the current Holiday Inn project couldn’t be more different from what CP had planned in the mid-1970s.

The developer, Canvar, is going for it’s third iteration of an already successful hotel base and apartment tower design they’ve already introduced to the city.

Take note: not condos, luxury apartments.

Canvar also erected the Hilton Garden Inn on Sherbrooke and the V on Bleury & René Lévesque (which features a Marriott Courtyard at its base). Also worth noting, this will mark the return of Holiday Inn to Montreal’s Central Business District, as the former location on Sherbrooke was converted into a private student residence last year. The former Marriott Courtyard was located next door and was converted into a McGill student residence a few years earlier, and Canvar’s Hilton Garden Inn project lies immediately next to those and was completed in 2008.

So here’s an interesting phenomenon: on the one hand the old university-adjacent hotels on Sherbrooke were repurposed and converted into student housing, and on the other hand the former ‘hotel cluster’ has been unpacked and ‘regenerated’ elsewhere in the city.

Canvar boasts the V building was 85% occupied within six months. If that’s accurate then this tower will likely be completed on time and, barring any unforeseen quick downturns in the local real-estate market, may very well expect similar results. When the project was announced in November of last year, Canvar estimated the hotel would be completed within two years (in time for the anticipated 2017 tourism spike) and the whole project finished within three. Given their recent successes I don’t doubt they’ll do it again – the idea works.

The concept of pairing a hotel base with a residential tower is advantageous for multiple reasons. First, it’s unlikely a medium-sized Holiday Inn will fail with such a choice address. Second, the tower can be scaled down (or eliminated) if there’s a major shift in the market. Third, the pairing of high-end apartments and a hotel in the high-density business core of the city is efficient and immensely practical for the range of business tourism needs in Montreal.

The new Holiday Inn will be built next to the YUL project, which includes two 38-floor towers featuring 800 condo units (excavations for which have begun) as well as 17 townhouses and the renovation of the Lafontaine Mansion into a single-family home (!!!). Within five years there’s a pretty good chance the entirety of the Overdale block will be redeveloped, with thousands of new residents living in a space that had been vacant or underused for the better part of twenty five years.

Opinion isn’t unanimous as to whether Montreal can support the number of condo projects currently under construction, and there are some who are warning of a potentially disastrous shift in the market, particularly in smaller markets with less than stellar economies, that may be very difficult to absorb. However, these warnings have been repeated ad infinitum for several years (a decade ago people were worried about too many condos, some things never change). The developers are bullish, I think at least in part because the new generation of homeowners simply won’t have too many other options: on-island house values are very high, and sprawl has pushed ‘affordable suburbs’ to the very edge of what most are willing to endure in terms of a daily commute. Congestion on our roadways, coupled with major construction projects and the high costs associated with car ownership all make urban condos that much more attractive and infinitely more practical to young professionals.

And then there’s the fact city living is infinitely more rewarding simply in terms of accessibility to all the fun stuff the city has to offer. If all these new residential projects come to fruition, the city will be able to offer thousands of people quality housing with a strong re-sale value and all within walking distance of every conceivable service, major cultural institutions and entertainment, retail and leisure districts, not to mention the majority of the city’s major employers.

An attractive offer, and with plenty of variety to suit diverse tastes and lifestyles. Even if branded lifestyle condo-dwelling isn’t your bag, it may serve the needs of tens of thousands of people, the vast majority of which would become property owners and tax payers to the City of Montreal.