The end is near for work on major artery
Hicham Saad said delivery trucks refuse to stop in front of his café and drop off his orders.
“I call them and make my order, but when I say I’m on St-Denis, they just say, ‘forget it.’ I have to go out and get the stock and bring it back here,” said Saad, owner of Café l’Insouciante, which opened a year and a half ago. “The good news is that I don’t need many deliveries because I have so few customers these days. Deliveries that used to last two weeks have lasted three months.”
Saad’s troubles are nearly over. Crews have finished replacing century-old water pipes and sewers and have moved on to rebuilding sidewalks and the two lanes in front of his café, on the west side of St-Denis between Rachel and Marie-Anne Sts. In fact, workers say they are ahead of schedule and the rebuilt road could be open more than a month early, depending on the weather, since much of the work can’t be done in heavy rain.
“They say they could be finished by the end of the month,” Saad said. “That’s nearly two months ahead of time, so that’s pretty good.”
Still, Saad said business has gone down by 80 per cent since crews dug up his side of the street in June.
Although the city prides itself on communicating with residents and merchants, Saad said he found he was not always informed of major events that affected him.
“There was one day that they were digging right in front of my door,” he said. “I had to close for the day.”
Saad said he’s lucky he owns the building where his café is situated and rents out a second-floor apartment. If he had to pay rent, he said there would be no way he could stay afloat.
Still, he said he could use a break on the $18,000 per year he pays in property tax. Saad isn’t alone. Merchants all along the street are hoping for a break on their taxes, as the street has been a construction zone since last November. The street’s merchants’ association has also asked the city for a tax break.
Mélanie Boudreau, the owner of La Piazzetta restaurant, said while the St-Denis project has been managed well, many business owners aren’t willing to stay on a street that is under construction.
“People remember what happened on St-Laurent (where the project lasted six months longer than predicted because the work was badly co-ordinated),” Boudreau said. “They knew this construction was coming three years in advance, so everyone jumped ship.”
She said it’s not fair that merchants now have to pay for neglect that was about 100 years in the making.
Luc Ferrandez, opposition Projet Montréal’s leader and mayor of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, said the city has to rethink how it helps out businesses during construction periods.
Lionel Perez, the city’s executive committee member in charge of infrastructure, said the city is already doing a lot for the St-Denis St. merchants. That includes grants to help revitalize their stores and do renovations inside to help boost business when the street is reopened.