Glen Yards 2008

Update from Factotum.

Snowpile Update

Explored the east end of the Turcot snowpiles the other day. It’s a bit strange how from the freeway it looks like a huge gray snowpile that is just slowly melting. But up close you can see that there is tons of earth and gravel marbled in. And tons of snowblower shredded trash. One of the more interesting things about Turcot Yards over the last few years was how clean it was relative to what one might normally think of huge abandoned spaces. But now it is filthy.

Here is the eastern tip of the larger snowpile. Falaise is blooming nicely.

Not a piece of The Rock.

On the part I walked on there was a lot of these holes.

It was quite windy so I am not sure how much toxic crap I was exposed to but so far I haven’t lit up in the dark. Still, this walk was a real eye opener in regard to how much garbage we gather with snow clearing maintenance. Of course the carcinogens remains slyly invisible.

P.S. Seems the toxicity of the Turcot Snowpiles is getting in the news.

Glen Yards 1971

some amazing shots from Factotum.

Another Griffintown Commentator

Latest installment in my series of essays that shows who was criticizing the Griffintown proposal and why. My point, of course, is that if there was an ounce of compassion or reason at City Hall the project would have been completely grounded, heck, it would never have been accepted under such conditions, but I digress to dream a little……. It is about greed, folks, plain and in your face simple greed. Do not let anyone tell you that the current City administration is trying to build a better Montreal, because it isn’t. Let me put it this way, if you start feeling sick you don’t go to a baker, you go to a doctor. Well, when some of the most highly regarded people in local architecture, experts if you will, find something wrong with a project and no one is listening, it can only mean that the baker is doing very well indeed.

by Raphaël Fischler, School of Urban Planning, McGill University

The Griffintown saga is an example of what has become routine in Montreal. A developer comes up with a project; citizens and planners (civil servants, members of municipal advisory committees, outside experts) believe that the plan is weak in several respects; officials, however, find that the plan is a great investment which will bring good tax-revenue to the city; they disregard the advice given to them and give the developer what he wants.

This is a caricature of what really happens, of course. In most cases, projects do get changed somewhat in response to advice given by residents, planners and others. The new development agreement between the City and Devimco shows that the Tremblay administration has forced the developer to improve his project in several ways, for instance by including more park space and by showing a bit more respect for the existing historic context.

But the improvements come nowhere near to responding to the requests for change that were issued. I don’t know exactly what the planners working for the City and for the South-West borough told officials about the project. I cannot imagine that they found it all good. What I can tell you, and what many of you know, is that both the Comité d’architecture et d’urbanisme and the Conseil du patrimoine, two so-called “expert” panels, issued very negative assessments of the project. Independent experts have expressed similar opinions in the media, and a large number of residents and other stakeholders have stated their reservations in public as well. The weaknesses that these people have highlighted have not really been remedied in the new plan.

Banksy

Just a tad late but this weekend he organized The Cans Festival in London.

From Wiki,

Banksy is a well-known pseudo-anonymous^[1] English graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol^[1] and born in 1974,^[2] but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details.^[3] According to Tristan Manco, Banksy “was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier engineer, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.”^[4] His artworks are often-satirical pieces of art that encompass topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stencilling technique similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. His art has appeared in cities around the world.^[5] Banksy’s work was borne out of the larger Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.” More here.

Probably thought of as a graffiti artist by many, Banksy takes it well beyond simple tagging. He has worked on a few continents including work on the West Bank Wall in Israel in 2005. Story here.

Banksy has been perhaps the most talked about artist on earth in recent years, and some of his works have sold for over 200,000 dollars. In fact there is a site that directly compares his work with that of Andy Warhol.

There is already a Flickr page with pictures from The Cans Festival.

Banksy is very concerned with social justice issues as seen in his “mainifesto” which is actually an extract from the diary of one of the first british soldiers to liberate nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

A couple of videos from this weekend.

Kristyn Vinkour

Manteno State Hospital was a mental asylum in Manteno, Illinois. It was open from 1930 to 1985. It was a Kirkbride institution. Since it’s closure many people have explored the premises as the buildings have gradually decayed, but perhaps none as intensely as artist Kristyn Vinikour. She took a look at the history of one patient, “Gennie”, and began to inscribe and document what that women’s experience may have been.

“I feel it is important for the story of Gennie to be told and for people to know the injustices she and many others were subjected to.”

The Gennie Messages

The Manteno Project

The Unexplained World

Kristyn Vinkour

The Sources Interchange

Built in the 60’s when it was believed that concrete could be sexy this thing has more curves than a belly dancer convention. Last Sunday was pretty nice and I had a chance to walk across the pedestrian overpass. This one is also on the list to be renovated or rebuilt.

Joesph Baker On Griffintown

I am posting this here because it is important that people (my readers? *smile*) truly comprehend exactly who was speaking against and why the Griffintown project raised so much opposition. These are not a bunch of “against everything professional protesters” but rather some of the most respected people in the field of architecture in Quebec, a group that could even be said to be “pro-development”.

guest post

by Joseph Baker, Architect, past president of the Quebec Order of Architects and former director of the School of Architecture, Universite Laval

“Griffintown was destroyed by municipal indifference and technocratic apathy; it is time to make amends and get it right,” writes Joseph Baker in this piece presented to the Montreal Citizen’s Forum last Thursday, April 24. This was the same day that the City released its revised PPU (Plan Particulier d’Urbanisme) for Griffintown.

I have a visceral reaction to grand plans—to words like “urban renewal”. Some years ago I moved my growing family into a quiet unpretentious district that the city fathers slated for renewal—every block, every street south of Dorchester Boulevard from Atwater to the Glen were to be demolished and handed over to a Toronto developer who proposed to erect a dozen high rise slabs in their place. As if that weren’t enough, highway planners would complete the destruction, and incidentally run an access ramp through my living room.

The Turcot Snowpiles

There was some magic going on in the Yards this winter as the snow just kept piling up and up and it was quite beautiful at times. But it has stopped snowing and the warmer temperatures of April have turned those piles into ugly, dirty, and probably quite toxic, slag heap looking shapes. Kirk Bennett believes there is some serious trouble with those piles that may cause some health concerns.

Here is some video he has produced.

For a good overview of the issues being presented here, please check out Kirk’s website that deals exclusively with the Turcot Snowpiles right here.

Dyptych

From JR Photoblog

City Hall Votes For Griffintown Project

Tiny little Gazette article here. Seems that there were only 3 votes against which can only confirm that, by and large, no one is paying attention to citizen’s concerns anywhere at City Hall. One might expect opposition councilors to rally against to some degree, if only to buy themselves some much needed publicity for the next election, but it seems the forces of collusion are playing hardball once again. Marvin Rotrand had asked for a delay on the vote which was not unreasonable given that there has been a lot of concern raised by citizen’s, including a plea by local architecture superstar Phyllis Lambert among others.

I haven’t felt this cynical since the first Olympic games bills started arriving, so leave it to Jack Ruttan to make my day!

Competitions And Knowing Your Developer

The High Line is probably one of the best known urban reclamation projects in the world and it does have the advantage of cool art/concert projects produced in it’s behalf. It even has a portrait project and, shudder, a Facebook group. It is also a good model for seeing how large scale urban planning projects may be done.

It was one thing to assimilate the old elevated rail line into the Manhattan fabric but one huge question was what would happen to the Rail Yards, a large quasi abandoned space in lower Manhatten where the High Line trains turned around?

Development of the yards was an open competition and 5, count ‘em, 5 projects were selected to compete. And the High Line blog made sure people got an in depth look at what each company offered and what they were all about. Wouldn’t that just seem sooo luxurious in Montreal?

In fact Friends of The High Line ran a design competition in 2003 to publicize their cause and received 720 entries from 36 countries. Publicity can, indeed, be a good thing.

Of course none of this is perfect and developers have met the challenge of public process by submitting outrageous renderings designed to seduce all naysayers (Can you say Devimco?). This New York Times article takes a look at this trend.

There has been some cool art projects for school kids to get involved with such as “Chalk Shoes To The High Line”.

So it s not a perfect process and not everyone will be ecstatic but here in Montreal we are truly bush league (remember the Expos?) as our small town officials make back room agreements and then tell the public what’s good for them after all the principles have agreed.

Sad.

The High Line/ Rail Yards blog.

And in Arizona they hold design competitions for suburban strip malls.

Devimco Buying Up Griffintown

Gazette article points out that Devimco owns (probably more than) 72% of Griffintown. While that probably is not illegal it certainly  reeks of something immoral. Devimco has been buying properties in Griffintown for 2 years or more. Surely they didn’t just go ahead with that in the hope that they might be able to develop a mega project there one day? Shouldn’t there be urban development/planning “Anti Trust” kind of laws? And what regulatory bodies, if any, does the City of Montreal have in place to say, whoa, a commercial real estate developer is buying up a whole district? Yes, it sure does look like one nice big sweet inside deal was worked out here.

The role of one time Mayor of Verdun, Georges Bosse as a lobbyist for the project is just so borderline corrupt it is amazing that something akin to a full scandal is not in the media. People would be screaming any where else. Um, no, It wouldn’t be that obvious any where else. Article here.

I find this part from the Gazette article humorous but like listening to someone who is veering off into total madness,

“The city has asked the developer to conserve the “Horse Palace,” a building that has been in continuous use as a stable since the 1800s. Goulet said the stable building will be preserved, but not to house horses.

“I could see it having a community use, such as a daycare,” he said.”

We are talking about people who cannot see the need for horses in Griffintown. Something very wrong there somewhere. These are the people who claim they now have a model of sustainable development in their project. These are big box developers, folks ( that means, among other things, cheap materials, quick labour). And, frankly, they will tell you anything to get their project approved. 8 years of construction is a long time and a lot of “Ooops” can happen. Doesn’t anyone think it s too much when they speak of creating lighting along the Canal, running trams to downtown, creating pedestrian underpasses, while making everything it touches golden green, and who knows what else? Ever been ripped off? Yea, it s always the nice guy who promises the sun, the moon and the stars, ain’t it? Letting one developer develop one whole district of the city is just plain not in any one’s best interest, and the too many balls in the air energy of this project is bound to end badly.

The Funeral

I hope this is a sign that maybe I will be late for my own. Only got to Griffintown around 4:30 and tried to play catchup to no avail. But it looks like the old town was laid to rest in style.

maZe Canadia has posted some photos at Flickr.

And here is two from Factotum.

Part of a set at flickr by kinalaya.

And a still and a video from my friend (whom I missed), Jack Ruttan.

And this one from ben soo.

Never Give Up.

Griffintown Is Dying

And the funeral is this Sunday.

On April 28, 2008, after a long illness, the historic Montreal neighborhood is expected to finally expire with the passage of 44.04 on the agenda of the Asemblee Ordinaire de Conseil Municipal.

Born in 1804, when renowned surveyor Louis Charland laid out the street grid, Griffintown suffered through long periods of neglect by the city administration, followed by frantic bursts of municipal rezoning activity that disrupted it’s circulatory system and ultimately led to it’s demise.

Griffintown died after being infected with a severe case of inverted urban planning (PPU designed by the developer), consisting of big box stores, apartment towers and street closures, resulting in a debilitating loss of patrimony.

Predeceased by sister Victoriatown, also known as Goose Village, who died from expropriation while giving birth to parking lots, Griffintown is survived by brothers Milton Park and Old Montreal.

A funeral for Griffintown and outdated urban planning practices is planned for Sunday, April 27, 2008. Mourners are requested to join the procession at the Griffintown Horse Palace at 1220 Ottawa Street at 3:00 PM, or at Place D’Armes at 3:45 PM for the funeral march to City Hall, Place Vauquelin, where eulogies (and other speeches) will be offered from 4:15 to 5:30 PM.

In lieu of flowers, mourners are requested to vote for the party that promises to rebuild the urban planning function of the Ville de Montreal in the next municipal election.

In case of rain, bring a black umbrella.

CSR Griffintown