N.D.G.’S library sign, car-less transit boss and horns aplenty

After a four-month hiatus, Metropolitan News is back, both the blog and this paper version. I hope you missed it.

Coincidence? Just before the 2009 municipal election, the city of Montreal announced it had funding for a new library/cultural centre in Notre Dame de Grâce. Now it seems the building will finally go up – just before the 2013 municipal election. Two months before the November 2009 election, a sign went up at the corner of Monkland and Benny Aves., across from the borough’s new $15-million sports complex. It promised a new $21-million library and Maison de la culture. Two and a half years later, the sign’s still there and it still says “fin des travaux 2012.” Côte des Neiges/n.d.g. borough Mayor Michael Applebaum tells me the delay is due to the city’s effort to make sure the project comes in on budget. On some other city projects that went to public tender recently, bids came in above what the city had expected, Applebaum said. So the city is carefully going over the technical documents for the new library/cultural centre to make sure there are no surprises when bids come in, Applebaum said. But he said the call for tenders is now expected to go out by early March and construction will start this summer. The centre should open in the fall of 2013 and the price tag is still $21 million, he said. Readers weighed in on the blog, including some still bitter about the 2007 closure of N.D.G. Fraser Hickson Library.

How does Michel Labrecque, the head of Montreal’s transit agency, get around? Here’s a breakdown the Société de transport de Montréal sent me. Labrecque, who does not have a driver’s licence, estimates he takes 2,000 trips per year (leisure, work, shopping, etc.). Of these: * 40 per cent are by bike * 30 per cent by public transit * 20 per cent by walking * 5 per cent by carpooling * and 5 per cent by taxi or a combination of the above The MUHC superhospital is taking shape in N.D.G., just south of the Vendôme métro. Unfortunately, despite years of planning and construction, things like public transit and bike access still haven’t been worked out. But the design seems set in stone for the $1.3-billion hospital, which will bring together the Montreal Children’s, Royal Victoria and Montreal Chest hospitals, as well as the Shriners Hospital. Check out the blog for new architectural images that show what it will look like when it’s completed in fall 2014 (patients will only start using it in the spring or summer of 2015). Looks a bit like a Lego building, no? It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2006, the MUHC announced with great fanfare that celebrated Montreal architect Moshe Safdie would design the master plan for the hospital. A year later, Safdie was dropped. On the next two Sundays at 1:30 p.m. (Feb. 26 and March 4), an unusual kind of music will fill the air in the Old Port thanks to the Pointe à Callières museum. It’s the annual Port Symphony. The sounds will come from the horns of ships moored at the Old Port, as well as trains and tugboats. This year’s composition is by an Indian-born Montreal composer, Sandeep Bhagwati, of Concordia University.

ariga@montrealgazette.com