Tag Archives: public spaces in Montreal

Economic commentary, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Urban Redevelopment

Port of Call, Montreal

Days after Montrealers went home salivating at the thought of a proposed new trans-regional light rail system, the Port of Montreal, in conjunction with the municipal and provincial government, announced a $78 million renovation of the Alexandra Quay and Iberville Passenger Terminal, and an opportunity for citizens to ‘reconnect’ with the river.

The renovation and improvement project is expected to be completed in time for the 2017 cruise season, and so will result in the closure of the quay and terminal this summer. Cruise ships will instead dock east of the Jacques Cartier Bridge, with shuttle buses ferrying passengers into the splashy tourism zone delineated by antique buildings harbour-side.

You might be wondering whether it’s wise to spend $78 million building a new passenger terminal for an antiquated method of high-volume transport, but alas it seems a fair number of people do indeed access Montreal via the Old Port, and up until now they’ve been welcomed by an outdated, if not dilapidated passenger terminal.

And just how may people are we talking about?

The answer is perhaps unexpectedly high: 91,000 people last year, twice as many as in 2011. The Port Authority has been actively courting cruise lines and it seems like their work is paying off. If everything goes according to plan, annual traffic is expected to reach 120,000 passengers by 2025, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

But of course this isn’t really a ‘transport infrastructure project’ in the same vein as the proposed ‘réseau éléctrique métropolitain’ (REM), as it will primarily benefit people who have the luxury of time and money to cruise up the Saint Lawrence. Also worth noting, some of these ships are of the casino-cruise variety. Whereas the CDPQ’s REM system still needs Ottawa and Quebec City to provide $2.5 billion in combined funding, this project has the green light with money already apparently ready to go.

So yes, public money will be spent to support private businesses and the wealthy of our society.

That being said, the most historic section of the city is largely preserved thanks to the tourism industry; so updating the passenger terminal isn’t just good for the tourism-driven businesses of Old Montreal, but the area’s physical vitality as well.

And that’s something we all ultimately benefit from; for better or for worse tourism helps protect our architectural heritage. Moreover, it should be noted that the new configuration of the quay will incorporate significant public spaces, including a green roof atop the terminal. Again, everyone gets to benefit from this as well. It’s in the port and city’s interest to encourage public use of what would otherwise be a wholly private affair.

Conceptual rendering of Iberville Terminal and Alexandra Quay - Provencher Roy
Conceptual rendering of Iberville Terminal and Alexandra Quay – Provencher Roy

And perhaps that’s leading to a more novel use of the terminal: an important part of Provencher Roy’s plan involves ‘lowering’ quay, and this may make the terminal accessible to smaller vessels, like passenger ferries (or dare I say it, perhaps some kind of Lachine Canal hydro bus).

So given the city’s only investing $15 million out of the total project cost, on first impression it seems like the public will at least gain access to additional public spaces, and an attractive and interactive new public space.

Coderre, with typical ringmaster showmanship, boasted to the Gazette that ‘it was an easy decision’ to allocate $15 million in municipal funds to the project, given the ‘major economic impact’ a shiny-new cruise ship terminal will provide the city.

Hard numbers to prove that point might be hard to come by, but what we have (at least as far as cruise ship terminals go) is in pretty rough shape and Provencher Roy’s design is both intriguing and seems to have the public in mind. The new passenger terminal will be modern and designed to permit two ships to dock simultaneously. Passengers will disembark nearer to ground level, traffic will be streamlined, and the terminal located closer to Old Montreal. Public spaces will include the water’s edge park at the end of the pier, in addition to the terminal’s year-round green roof, and possibly an observation tower as well.

I have my doubts renovating the passenger terminal will have a ‘major’ impact on the economy of Montreal in the broad sense, but we can let Denis boast. It looks like a lot of bang for a reasonable amount of buck, and at the end of the day a port city that’s also a major tourist destination should have a proper passenger terminal. That we get more public space to boot isn’t half bad.

I suppose I’m a touch biased. A long time ago I had a weird summer job processing passengers during cruise season. The terminal is well past its prime. I remember the first day I worked at the Iberville Terminal thinking that this must be the first year in decades that any passenger ship had docked in the port. For a moment I was convinced the terminal had only recently been reactivated, as all the workspaces, computers, scanners, tables (etc ad infinitum) we used had been brought in on wheeled carts and set up, apparently, just for this one occasion. I later discovered it was cheaper to rent the requisite equipment and drive it to the docks rather than have to maintain a full-time passenger terminal, considering how few ships docked here at the time. Not having brought a lunch that day, I was quite dismayed to discover the café at the far end of the terminal had evidently not been opened in many years; a thick layer of dust coated the ashtrays left out on the counter.

To say the least, it was odd working there. A quick panic of activity and crowds before the whole place fell back into its more natural state of slow urban decay.

I rather liked it. It seemed fantastically anachronistic, and yet it also felt like I was carrying on in some long tradition of Montreal dock workers too. Naive teenaged romanticism aside, what’s clear enough is the sorry state of the Iberville Terminal and Alexandra Quay as is. It’s virtually a no man’s land throughout most of the year, and there’s nothing really to do there. The quay and terminal complex’s last major renovation dates back fifty years to Expo 67, perhaps ironically at a period in time in which sea travel was becoming, for the masses, quite obsolete. I would say the last time it got a fresh coat of paint may be as long as 24 years ago, when the city celebrated its 350th anniversary.

I quite like the pier as it is because, for the most part, outside of the cruise season it’s essentially abandoned. There’s an ostensibly off-limits look-out at the end of it from which a few tattered flags remain beating against the wind, but other than that it’s one of those places I go in the city to get away from it all and enjoy a moment of silence surrounded by cacophonous city.

I suppose I’ll trek out one more time to enjoy the odd juxtaposition of calm in the midst of so much activity. If this project is completed as conceived, I’ll be glad to soon share this space…

A modest proposal, Commentary, Cultural commentary, Economic commentary, History and Culture, Kondiaronk - My Montréal Experience, Montréal Architecture, Montréal Landmarks, Perspectives on the City, Urban Redevelopment

Nothing succeeds like excess

The City of Montreal has announced plans to renovate the northernmost section of Dorchester Square at an estimated cost of $4.2 million. A $700,000 contract was awarded to noted local landscape architect Claude Cormier to prepare the design and tender specifications.

The section of Dorchester Square to be renovated runs between Peel and Metcalfe from the south entrance to the Dominion Square Building to the ‘camilienne‘ (also known as a vespasienne, it’s the small stone octagonal building with a café in it, identical to the similarly-purposed building in Carré Saint-Louis) and would include extending the green ‘footprint’ of the city square by reducing the number of lanes on the street that runs between the square and the building. Additionally, land around the entrance and exit to the underground parking lot would be reclaimed, somewhat, and pedestrian bridges are to be built over them.

As Andy Riga puts it in the Gazette “Under the current layout, pedestrians must contend with cars entering and leaving an underground parking garage adjacent to the square.”

Contend seems like an odd choice of words to me, as it gives the impression of a taxing struggle. We’re talking about cars slowly moving in to and out of a parking garage in a space that naturally attracts large numbers of pedestrians and has a posted speed limit of 10 km per hour. I no more have to ‘contend’ with the difficulties of navigating vehicular traffic here than any other intersection in the city, but I digress.

Perspective from Dominion Square Building looking 'Montreal South'
Perspective from Dominion Square Building looking ‘Montreal South’

What slays me is the bridges over the parking garage access ramps; talk about an over-engineered solution to a non-existent problem.

I can’t recall any serious incident involving a pedestrian struck by a car or a bus on either the side-street or the garage ramps, such that it requires physically segregating one from the other. That said, it might be neat to have a vantage point on the square from several feet above the ground.

But the cost… $4.2 million is a lot of money to be spending on parks beautification in an uncertain economy.

Don’t get me wrong, I like that the city is spending money on our parks and public spaces, I just wonder if we’re really going about this in the most efficient way possible. It seems that all too often the city waits for major renovations and redesigns when better year-to-year maintenance would make that unnecessary.

For your consideration: the Mordecai Richler Memorial Gazebo, Viger Square, Cabot Square up until about half a year ago…

The other thing to consider is that, as far as Dorchester Square/ Place du Canada is concerned, this would be the third phase of a project that stretches back about seven years and has so far cost $15.4 million. The third phase would increase the total to just under $20 million, assuming the new project’s current estimate is accurate.

It’s worth noting that the plan is to have the renovation completed by August of 2017, after one year of work.

I can imagine at least part of the $4.2 million project cost is related to this unusually rapid turn-around time. The first phase of Dorchester Square’s renovation, completed after about two years of work in 2010, cost $5.4 million and the southern section, Place du Canada, opened in November of last year after being worked on for about the same amount of time, at a cost of $10 million.

Consider that we’re spending $4.2 million to renovate a section of park roughly one-third the size of the space renovated six years ago at a cost of $5.4 million.

In other words, we’re spending a lot more per square meter to renovate a much smaller space.

So perhaps we need to reconsider the expensive novelties – like the pedestrian bridges and the half-fountain.

Bird's eye rendering of new Dorchester Square; note the pedestrian bridges
Bird’s eye rendering of new Dorchester Square; note the pedestrian bridges