Building up in the West and Off Island
One
of the fastest-growing regions in the country is on our doorstep, and we want to be part of the effort to build the community there.
If you live off the western tip of Montreal Island — or even have just passed through the area in the last few years — you’ll know the astounding growth we’re talking about.
Residents can drive through their neighbourhood, look left and see a new development that appears to have sprung up overnight. Montrealers are crossing the bridges to shop at new outlets or eat at new restaurants. Schools are being built, the new Highway 30 extension is drawing new business to the area, and a hospital is on the drawing board.
So we are very happy to have launched the Off Island Gazette — offislandgazette.com — covering Vaudreuil-Dorion, Île-Perrot, Pincourt, Notre-Dame-de-l’Île Perrot, St-Lazare and Hudson.
In print, it’s a few pages in the weekly West Island Gazette tabloid published every Wednesday and distributed in the West and Off Island areas. Online, it’s a new website with no limits on space — for either stories or conversations.
We have also moved our West Island website, westislandgazette. com, to a new platform. It has been given a new look and, in the coming weeks, will offer new features, like real estate transactions to let you know what residential properties are selling for.
We’ve been covering the Off Island area in the pages and on the website of the West Island Gazette for years, but it was time for this expansion and separate identity. The Vaudreuil-Soulanges region grew 15.7 per cent between the 2006 and 2011 census. Within the region, individual municipalities grew between 5 per cent and 27.8 per cent (that’s Pincourt, at the upper end).
We want to be there to cover the stories that come with such rapid growth — how municipalities are dealing with it, how business is developing, and how both long-time and brand-new residents are making it all work. And, in the coming weeks, we will be delivering that news right to your hand-held device.
But even more importantly, we want to be a centre for you in the community to exchange information of all kinds — to learn about that new store or gym, come together on a municipal issue, post photos, share traffic-detour tips.
I hope you’ll bookmark offislandgazette.com on your computer or your smartphone. You can also follow us on Twitter @OffIslandNews and @westislandgaz, on Facebook and of course in the West Island Gazette section on Wednesdays.