Marché Central, the big box power centre that has emerged recently around the corner of Acadie and Chabanel, just north of the Metropolitan, is installing recycling bins throughout its property, for the benefit of its customers. It will also provide bins to its retail tenants, allowing them, finally, to recycle.
The Marché Central’s management claims that this effort is a big step towards helping the environment. “Ici, l’environnement, c’est devenu une priorité. Maintenant, quand le temps est venu de faire une dépense, on essaie toujours de trouver un moyen de réduire nos dépenses en énergie. C’est important de trouver des façons écologiques de gérer nos activités,” declared its assistant director, Raymond St-Jacques, in an Ahuntsic community weekly.
Steve Faguy, on his blog, rightly points out that this is little more than a cheap PR stunt. Recycling bins don’t change the fact that the Marché Central is a vast, car-oriented shopping centre that occupies a large chunk of land in the middle of the city. Its huge surface parking lots can accommodate 4,000 cars, but there are virtually no sidewalks, few spaces for bicycles and no attempt to integrate public transit, despite the nearby presence of several bus lines and even a commuter train station. This is, in other words, a single-use retail area no different from the sprawl you can find on any suburban thoroughfare in North America.
The Marché Central’s impact on Montreal is more insidious than you might think. Although it surely generates a fair bit of tax revenue, it sucks customers and their money away from urban, pedestrian-oriented retail strips. Its auto-oriented design is an environmental disaster, contributing to Montreal’s ever-worsening air pollution, not to mention the heat and contaminated runoff generated by its asphalt parking lots. The fact that its management is now trying to wave the flag of environmental responsibility makes this all the more despicable.
The blame doesn’t rest entirely with them, though. At least one of its retailers, the Mountain Equipment Co-op — a popular outdoor equipment cooperative that prides itself on its sustainable business practices — has been promoting the same brand of faux-enviromentalism since it opened in Montreal three years ago. In Toronto, Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City and Halifax, MEC opened its stores in central locations easily accessible by foot, transit and bike. Here, though, it chose to open at Marché Central. Although it has housed itself in an energy-efficient building, that hardly changes the fact that almost all of its customers are forced to travel to MEC by car. That doesn’t even take into account the hypocrisy of opening a supposedly environmentally-friendly store in an environment that is so blatantly hostile to alternative modes of transportation.
So many Montrealers are concerned about the well-being of their city, yet I haven’t heard a peep about the development of the Marché Central, which was vacant land less than a decade ago. If we want to keep our neighbourhoods healthy and encourage people to get out of their car, why are we turning a blind eye to this?
Graphic created by Steve Faguy
7 comments
The Marché central is so out of place in the area it’s looks weird when you pass besides it. I can’t point out why really, it just looks out of place.
Green? well for that, nice try, maybe a step in the right direction. but move a bus stop inside the parking lot or have a bike path from nearby Ville Mont-Royal.
Good article!
It’s a question of convenience, and cost efficiency. Marche Central is located in a rather secluded and poor part of the city with a low density of population.
The same economics that go in to creating shopping spaces in westmount or le plateau where large portions of land are rare and expensive can’t apply here.
The owners had to attract a wealthier clientele, which mainly resides in areas farther away, the very same clientele which most likely wouldn’t bike their way to best buy to get their new 52″ HDTV.
Jack — the one thing I’d say to that is that this was a blank slate. We could have made density by building a mixed-use, transit-accessible neighbourhood.
Retail that attracts people from across Montreal, as well as cinemas and big box stores, can be integrated into a pedestrian-friendly urban environment. There are some great examples of this in Vancouver where you can find Costco, Canadian Tire and Best Buy built into the base of condo towers in marginal areas.
People don’t ride their bike to buy a 52″ TV but that doesn’t stop them from shopping at the two Future Shop locations downtown. People can park off-street, in a garage or underground, and they can always get stuff delivered.
C’est beau de voir comment on reussit à reduire à l’insignifiance, les gestes positifs (peu importe ce qui peut être fait pour le bien être de sa collectivité)pour l’environnement. L’effet domino, vous connaissez?
Vous pouvez apporter des idées pour augmenter votre apport à ce que vous croyez défendre au lieu de détruire ce qui qui peut être fait.
Vous suggérez de démolir des infrastructures existantes, quelle bonne idée! Pour l’instant celles-ci payent des taxes qui permettent d’aider à entretenir les rares espaces verts de l’île de Montréal, déneiger vos trottoirs cet hiver, améliorer les pistes cyclables existantes et en développer de futurs (même au Marché Central, à suivre…), contribuer aux programmes sociaux qui ont un grand besoin de financement pour supporter leurs efforts pour leur communauté et j’en passe.
Nous sommes des pionniers dans le domaine, implanter un tel projet sur une si grande superficie de terrain demande une réflexion pour maximiser nos efforts. Surtout lorsque des enjeux économiques demandent des justifications et de convaincre tous les partenaires impliqués dans ce vaste projet.
Ce n’est pas terminé, nous voulons continuer à contribuer et augmenter les efforts pour améliorer notre apport à ce que vous croyez juste et équitable, peu importe les gains obtenus, ils contribueront à améliorer le bien être de tous.
Indeed, Marché Central is a horrible place where the car is king and reckless consumption is idolized. Not to say that it does not generate tax revenue – it does – but when you weigh the cost to the environment, cost to lively neighborhoods, and the type of behavior it encourages, I doubt that it is bring much of a ‘positive’ return on investment to the city.
Recycling, at this stage in the game is so easy to do that no one can really take credit for it. When Marché Central puts in geothermal heating for all those big box stores, bike lanes, public transit then we can start talking about ‘greening’ the shopping experience.
And that is why I no longer shop at MEC!
Steve
Mountain Equipment Coop’s commitment to making their buildings environmentally sustainable is nothing more then a marketing tool to make us members feel better about buying overpriced materials. It has been 8 years since I approached the Edmonton location, trying to get them to replace the inefficient light pollution producing fixtures on the exterior of their building. There are more environmentally friendly fixtures out there – I have seen them outside of Best Buy. At first, my suggestion was ignored. Then I was told flat out no. Then, in 2006 the Edmonton location of MEC “endorsed” the creation of a Dark Sky preserve just outside of Edmonton. They had a big display all about environmentally friendly lighting and light pollution. Just meters away from the display board are their own lights, the kind that the display condemns and the kind that MEC refused to replace. Once more I brought it up with MEC. This time I was treated like my membership actually meant something, but they still have not replaced the fixtures.