Development plan for Molson site a breath of fresh air
Shows foresight to look at big picture when renewing industrial lands
Imagine that.
When the site of Montreal’s iconic Molson-Coors brewery is redeveloped over the coming decades into housing, office and commercial space, there will be room set aside for an expansive park with views of the St. Lawrence, a riverside promenade for the public and, gasp, a school! On Wednesday, Montreal’s executive committee endorsed an agreement negotiated with the real-estate promoters who have acquired the prime site in eastern downtown to cede land for these public amenities. Beforehand.
The deal, between the city and the consortium made up of Groupe Séléction and Groupe Montoni, was lauded as “historic.” And it is.
It shows foresight to look at the big picture when renewing industrial lands, rather than focusing on a condo tower here or an office block there. It takes vision to consider how the public spaces will augment the private spaces that will one day be built.
And it requires wisdom to conceive of a project that will fit — and maybe even breathe new life — into a thriving community.
If this all seems too good to be true, it’s because there has been precious little of this kind of thinking surrounding the construction boom of the past few years.
As executive committee chair (and Sud-Ouest borough mayor) Benoît Dorais noted: if only such an agreement had been in place for Griffintown. Instead, walls of condos went up and amenities like schools, green space, community centres, libraries and affordable housing were afterthoughts. Developers got rich, the city got increased density and residents got shiny, new, modern condos. But Montreal got little in the way of a complete neighbourhood.
Same story in western downtown, where highrises are multiplying, but parks and sports fields are scarce. Hundreds of children are being bused out of their district to attend schools in other parts of the city — which are now bursting at the seams as a consequence. Schools were forgotten during the planning and permit process and Montrealers continue to pay the price.
In lavishing praise on the agreement for the Molson site, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante couldn’t help but lament the failures of the past. Plante, who is also mayor of Ville-Marie borough, recalled Devimco pulling the plug on negotiations to include a school in its redevelopment of the old Montreal Children’s Hospital as particularly “painful.”
While plans are now underway to build two schools for the growing number of urban families, that fundamental infrastructure is still years away from opening.
It’s far from the only example of what might have been. The redevelopment of the Triangle in the northwestern corner of Côte-desNeiges was supposed to be centred on a park. But delays in placing a reserve on the land meant the price soared out of reach. So today, car dealerships sit on tracts of what should have, could have, would have been green space.
In comparison, the park that will be the focal point of the Molson site redevelopment is 10-per-cent larger that regulations require, at 13,200 square metres. And the corridor for the public promenade that will make the waterfront accessible from Notre Dame St. E. is an additional attribute. Besides the space reserved for a school or possible community centre, there will also be affordable housing.
Far from being concessions to the city, these public goods will only make the real-estate project more appealing to potential buyers or tenants.
This is all still a blueprint, of course. There is still a public consultation underway on the future of Les Faubourgs, the sector of eastern Ville-Marie that includes not only Molson-Coors but the old Radio-Canada tower. The brewery won’t decamp for the South Shore until 2024, though Molson will maintain its head office on the site it has occupied for more than a century. The city won’t officially take possession of the ceded lands until 2027. And the construction of the new neighbourhood could last until 2035.
But this agreement must nevertheless become a template for how the city plans all new developments: from the ground up. Montreal must avoid the mistakes when plans are drawn up for the old Blue Bonnets racetrack site, for instance, or if a baseball stadium is built in the Peel Basin, which would probably be financed by residential and commercial real-estate ventures. And it must ensure that the Royalmount monstrosity — the retail, hotel and entertainment mega-complex that is now supposed to include 6,000 housing units — follows these guiding principles as well.
Let’s hope Montrealers can finally dare to dream of a city that takes the tenets of urban planning to heart.