And City Hall is enjoying the ride. There is an article in today’s Gazette entitled, “City Builds Discontent”, that discusses concern about the economic impact of the Griffintown project on Ste. Catherine Street.
Some quotes,
“It’s a breach of trust,” said Dinu Bumbaru, program director for Heritage Montreal.”Imagine if we have this flawed process that we saw in Griffintown applied to all these projects? Montreal is going to be a planning hell.”
And my favorite in the can-you-stretch-this-one-any-further category comes from executive committee spokesperson, Allan DeSousa, “And a tramway line runs in two directions. Griffintown residents might use it to shop downtown”. That’s like saying people will move here because of the shopping, but may prefer to shop elsewhere, still, it is good to know that he understands the basic dynamics of tram travel.
Marvin Rotrand, Union Montrealer Warren Allmand and Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron were the only members of the 65-seat council to oppose the project.
Council has “a few lone voices among this pack of unanimous-voting acolytes of the mayor,” architect Joesh Baker said bitterly. He objects to the project’s scale and density.
The most ironic part of the whole thing is City Hall announcing it will form a committee to study improving Ste. Catherine Street. Suddenly it needs improving? If it ain’t broken now, but you know you are inflicting great damage….?
It is pretty obvious that council is made up of people anticipating wonderful careers beholden to favors given to developers. Something is very wrong with council’s support for the Griffintown project, something very tragic in the making.
This is the same administration responsible for “improving” infrastructure on blvd. Saint Laurent. That project kept the street torn open, dusty, noisy, traffic fragmented, and a basic nightmare for a year and half while at least fourteen business were forced to close. But these same people are capable of giving the city billion dollar make overs? Gimme a break!
The Tremblay Administration needs to be voted out of existence! The elections are only a little over a year away. But it is time to start organizing now!
