Royalmount sees T.M.R. holding rest of us hostage
Concerns about traffic, transit, school all need to be addressed at the onset
It was bad enough that the Royalmount mega-project slated for the junction of Highways 40 and 15 was going to make already hellish traffic worse at one of Montreal’s most congested interchanges.
But the promoter’s desire to include up to 6,000 housing units in the $2-billion high-end retail/ office/hotel/entertainment complex foists a whole new set of problems on the metropolis, neighbouring boroughs and municipalities, and potentially the entire region.
Yet all those affected are being given little say.
Despite serious reservations about the far-reaching ramifications expressed at five days of hearings before the Montreal agglomeration council, Royalmount is being presented as a done deal.
Town of Mount Royal, where the behemoth is mostly located, has already provided its enthusiastic endorsement.
Permits in hand, developer Carbonleo says preparatory work on the site is already underway, with a planned opening in 2022.
Royalmount is being touted as a forward-thinking development: transit-oriented in keeping with the “trend” toward mobility; energy-efficient with its green roof; and technologically savvy with its smart office buildings. Buzzwords aside, it seems more likely to repeat some of the worst planning mistakes of the past.
Transforming a vast, disused industrial park into a massive new midtown for Montreal threatens to undermine the vitality of downtown and harm the city’s established arts, culture and restaurant scenes, critics have warned. But if Royalmount is now supposed to be a residential area, too, where are the libraries, parks and recreation facilities (besides the waterpark attraction, of course)?
More crucially, where are the schools? The Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys, a board already struggling with an explosion in enrolment, noted this omission in its brief.
After the construction boom in Griffintown and the eastern part of downtown, we ought to have learned that neighbourhood schools need to be included in plans from the outset — not an afterthought that leaves boards scrambling and children in the lurch.
If land isn’t set aside for the public good now, it doesn’t just magically happen later. Sites get snapped up for private ventures and suddenly it’s too expensive or there’s no place left for services and amenities. Just look at the Triangle neighbourhood, not so far from Royalmount, where delays in placing a hold on land resulted in a truncated new park having to share space with car dealerships.
Royalmount’s links to public transit are extremely limited. The de la Savane métro is about a kilometre away and a new REM station will be nearby. But both will be across busy, desolate, windy, concrete highways, making foot access difficult.
Carbonleo has offered to help fund everything from a $22-million pedestrian bridge over the Décarie Expressway to an electric shuttle linking up to public transit — and hey, why not a school?
These are baby steps in the right direction, but they fall short of what is required to create a thriving, healthy, modern new neighbourhood. And can we really count on developers to come through? Skepticism is warranted, given the experience of the school-that-never-was included in Devimco’s redevelopment of the old Montreal Children’s.
The stakes are so high surrounding Royalmount that critics want the province to step in. At the very least, St-Laurent borough Mayor Alan DeSousa’s call for a moratorium makes sense. The only card Montreal and neighbouring municipalities on the island have to play is that the addition of the housing units to the proposal will require a change to the urban plan.
T.M.R. Mayor Philippe Roy practically dared anyone to stand in the way by evoking the spectre of a lawsuit.
“The final say is from us,” he said.
T.M.R. is acting like an annoying neighbour who builds a huge addition on their house, puts in a pool, decks it out with speakers, then invites their friends over every weekend to party. They may be acting within their rights, but their lack of consideration for others is holding everyone else hostage.
The social acceptability for a development of this magnitude is extremely tenuous if conferred by only a municipality that makes up just one per cent of the population of the entire agglomeration. Without wider backing — and in the face of widespread opposition — the imposition of the project lacks legitimacy.
Montreal’s Chamber of Commerce has called Royalmount a home run and warned putting up roadblocks will send the wrong message to developers.
Actually, it would send a message that should have been sent ages ago: that the promise of investment, no matter how big, in a poorly conceived plan, no matter how slick, isn’t always worth it. It pays to get it right the first time, rather than have to deal with the long-term harm.
Royalmount has been slammed as everything from the Disneyfication of Montreal to a white elephant to commercial megalomania. If the concerns about transit access, traffic and public services aren’t addressed from the outset, it risks being an albatross. ahanes@postmedia.com