Poor Ste-Kate being toyed with
City hall keen to eliminate all street parking as mega malls continue to attract shoppers
Dear Ste-Catherine: The plan to re-make you gets more nerve-racking all the time, especially now that you face new mortal enemies, like the proposed Royalmount mall. It’s Monster-malls versus Main Street, a perfect storm that’s got me nervous, my saintly friend. I was on-board with the city’s plan to re-design you into something more, well … pedestrian, Catherine. But I’m re-thinking that now that your own shop-owners are upset with some of the plan. Downtown Montreal is a onestreet wonder — among the liveliest on the continent — and you, Catherine, are both our Main Street and Grand Dame. If we make a mistake, we could accidentally maul you and all downtown. So, what’s worrying me? Shrinking parking: In earlier plans, city hall was slashing 140 parking spots. But in a plan floated last week, they would eliminate all 500 of your spots — by widening both sidewalks and narrowing traffic to one lane. They seem convinced people will stream down to visit you by foot, bus and bike, Catherine, that you no longer depend on street parking. Really? When I visited you last week, Saint Kate, you were as usual, so filled with parked cars I eventually gave up. Your 500 spots can get used by different motorists every hour, perhaps 4,000 a day. That’s why shop owners have been waiting with frustration for city hall to announce alternative parking arrangements. Their 8,000-shop association has now strongly requested that an underground parking lot be built beneath McGill-College Ave., soon to become a public square. That’s a routine solution everywhere from Burlington to Barcelona to replace on-street parking. But Projet Montréal wants to make a statement about cars, whether on Mount Royal, or downtown, Catherine, and they don’t seem to have parking lots in their DNA. They also don’t grasp the danger you face as you’re boxed in by big-box rivals.
The monster malls: These vast shopping wastelands have turned many city’s “Main Street” into ghost towns, because they offer one advantage: endless free parking for shoppers to haul out 75-inch TVs or three-months of groceries. Brossard’s humongous Dix30 mega-mall has become a virtual city, sucking thousands of shoppers away from you, Catherine. Marché Central is almost intimate in comparison, but deadly competition too. The proposed Royalmount project in TMR is the Darth Vader of malls, in striking distance of downtown. Developers have plans for 6,000 housing units, a 5,000-seat theatre, a waterpark, endless stores and maybe a Disneyland and NASA moon launch site. If we don’t protect you Catherine, it could become The Mall that Ate Montreal. It would also have 8,000 parking spots: two-thirds as many as all downtown. It’s being built in T.M.R., so Montreal has no real power to block it, but we can at least defend you from it and its sister malls, Catherine. Making you more pedestrian-friendly, car-free and people-centric is a great way to fight back, Catherine, but you need to compete for motorists too. That’s especially true in Montreal, where there’s another danger city hall doesn’t fully grasp. Winter: It’s a hard reality here, as anyone who’s glanced out their window since mid-November has noticed, and it’s not going anywhere for several months. Wide sidewalks may be fabulous much of the year but they won’t draw big crowds, or street festivals, once you turn into wintry Ice Queen Ste-Catherine. That’s why I pushed for you to get heated sidewalks as a winter attraction, but the city nixed that plan. Without them, cars and nearby parking remain a necessary evil to attract shoppers downtown. City hall says we’ll all flood down on improved winter public transit, and maybe some day we will. But a recent Gazette investigation revealed over 20 per cent of our buses are generally under repair. We had fewer on the road in 2017 than in 2012. Bike downtown? I pedalled Maisonneuve through much of November, but like most Montreal bikers — and Bixi itself — I hang up my pedals on snowy days.
The stakes: When the city closed the north baseball field in Jeanne Mance Park, it hurt many people — though another government could quickly reopen it someday. But if converting all your street parking into sidewalks sends frustrated motorists abandoning you for malls, Catherine, there will be no easy way for you to recover. It could take years to redesign you again, and by then you might be a ghostly memory of today. So let’s go car-free slowly and cautiously. Let’s close you off to traffic for a month in summer, Catherine. If that works let’s gently go further. Let’s also try to think creatively: how about removable sidewalk wideners that can be dismantled in winter? Or even heated? However, if we’re really determined to eliminate all your parking, let’s build that underground garage first. The city says it hasn’t made any final decisions and will eventually hold consultations. But as we’ve seen from the mountain, consultations can be controversial. So let’s speak up for you now, Catherine. Otherwise, we may only realize how much we loved you after you’re gone. Your pal, Josh