Merchants ready to oppose Van Horne Ave. update

Merchants in Outremont say they’re worried about a street improvement plan that could see half the on-street parking spots on Van Horne Ave. removed.

More than a dozen businesses on the street are now encouraging customers to sign a petition against parking reductions.

“We want to be proactive,” says Léa Makridis-Lebeuf, one of the petition’s organizers and a partner in l’Atelier des Compagnons, a custom furniture store on Van Horne.

The final version of the redevelopment plan was supposed to be released this winter, but merchants say they haven’t seen anything since a public consultation last May. One of the proposals shown at the time included a 50-per-cent reduction of on-street parking.

A public meeting about the redevelopment plan was supposed to take place in January. It was cancelled and hasn’t yet been rescheduled.

Makridis-Lebeuf says her group is waiting until the final plan is released before it decides what action to take.

“We’re collecting signatures right now so we’re ready for what comes next,” she says.

Merchants say they’re not opposed to the redevelopment plan itself, which will see sidewalks widened, more trees planted and could include a bike lane.

Vince Dubé, the manager of Cycles Régis, a Van Horne bicycle store, says he hopes a compromise can be found to create “a neighbourhood that’s friendly for bikers and people that want to walk by, but also includes cars, because I don’t think it’s a means of transportation that’s going to go away.”

He says most of his customers are bringing their bicycles in for

It’s something that we’re going to lose with our customers, that closeness, if they have to park on side streets.

repairs, so they drive to the store.

“Our parking spots are something that we need for our customers,” he says.

When he sees customers pulling up, he says, he goes outside to help them with their bikes.

“It’s something that we’re going to lose with our customers, that closeness, if they have to park on side streets,” Dubé says. “We might even lose business from it.”

A spokesperson for Montreal city council’s executive committee said the date for the next public meeting on the redevelopment has not yet been set, but citizens will be informed when it is.

“Since the project is still in the planning phase, we are pursuing discussions with the neighbouring merchants in order to enrich the project,” Noémie Brière-Marquez says.

The office of Marie Cinq-Mars, Outremont’s borough mayor and the area’s only city councillor said she was unavailable for an interview. Multiple calls and emails to Céline Forget, the borough councillor who represents most of the area covered by the redevelopment plan, were not returned.

A study conducted by city engineers in 2016 found the majority of parking spots on Van Horne were occupied less than 20 per cent of the time and that most people were parked for less than half an hour. It concluded that the number of on-street parking spots could be reduced by up to 50 per cent.

But Dubé says that some mornings, when he shows up to work, he can’t even find parking on a side street, and has to pay for metered parking on Van Horne. “If we don’t have those parking spots, how do we get to work?” he says.