In the midst of endless complaints about the slow pace of renovation work on the Main, another, much smaller main street is about to get a makeover: Ste. Anne Street, the main drag of cutesy suburb Ste. Anne de Bellevue. Between 2008 and 2009, it will be completely reconstructed in three phases at a cost of $5 million.
Obviously, the town, which is on the western tip of Montreal Island, is not far enough to escape the macabre spectre of St. Laurent. “It’s going to be done after the big season, making sure we’re not penalizing the merchants. We’re trying to make sure the logistics of everything go well, so that we don’t have a situation like on St. Laurent Boulevard,” Ste. Anne’s city clerk told the West Island chronicle.
Apparently, Ste. Anne de Bellevue’s downtown area — quaintly referred to as “the village” — is doing quite well. It’s a nice place, sandwiched between Lake St. Louis and the Lake of Two Mountains, along the picturesque channel dividing Montreal from Île Perrot. It’s also the most substantial of the old villages that have been subsumed by Montreal’s suburban sprawl, big enough to feel like an intact town and not a strip of old shops and houses marooned in a greater sea of subdivisions. If you go, I recommend taking the 211 bus along the Lakeshore, possibly the prettiest bus ride in Montreal.
Let’s hope that the Ste. Anne St. renovation doesn’t have too much of an impact on businesses. Even then, though, for all the pain these reconstructions cause in the short term, it seems pretty clear to me that they have a net long-term benefit for business owners and pedestrians alike.
Consider the example of Bernard St. in Mile End, which was dug up between 2004 and 2006 for what seemed like an eternity. It was dusty and uninviting — but it was all worth it. The street’s wide new sidewalks, which include room for café tables, benches and bike racks, are a vast improvement over the decrepit, narrow old ones. In the past year, several new businesses have opened on Bernard, including the fantastic new Drawn and Quarterly bookstore. For the first time, there is an actual streetlife on Bernard: people linger on the sidewalk, chatting with friends. It feels like a real place now, not just a forlorn commercial street on the edge of a neighbourhood.
Ste. Anne St. photo from Wikipedia; Bernard St. photo from Spacing Toronto