Photo du jour: Condoscape

14 comments

1. The buildings aren’t unpleasant, and I agree with dense downtown neighbourhood development, but are there “commerces de proximité”? Can you walk to a grocery shop, go to a café? Perhaps there is something round the corner, but it looks rather sterile.

   I remember living in Rome – no, not in the historic centre – and all the blocks of flats like that had small businesses on the ground floor level – cafés, shops etc.

   And beyond small businesses, what is available in terms of nearby (walkable) community amenities – parks, community centres etc.

   I don’t see a lot of trees and greenery either – of course those condos are very new so the tree in the foreground is still small, but I don’t see a lot more.

2. “Condoscape” lol :P

3. I walk through there every day on my way to work… there really isn’t much around, but they are building a supermarket across Notre-Dame at the new ETS rez and there are a couple of pharamacies and deps already. Heading east on Notre-Dame there are a lot of nice little hole-in-the-wall cafés. The neighbourhood really is growing.

4. Really? Didn’t know about the cafes. That neighbourhood sure has changed, then. The hot dog/patates/spruce beer place is gone, right?

5. The spruce beer place moved to a nearby location in 2004, I think, but then it closed in 2006 after its owner, Barbara Strudensky, died of cancer. (She had a really nice obit in Maclean’s, of all places.) Her husband is still brewing the old Émile Bertrand spruce beer recipe, though — you can get it at Paul Patates, a pretty good diner on Charlevoix St. in the Point.

6. I don’t really like the buildings along de la Montagne and St-Jacques. Their set-back with their “nature band-aids” (as James Howard Kunstler would call them) remove them from the street making them feel alienating and suburban. They also have large inner courtyards but are only accessible to condo owners; not a good way to build community. I’ve heard a rumour that the two tallest buildings weren’t supposed to be any taller then the other buildings but the developer kept building until ordered to stop. The fines cost less than the money they’ll make from selling the additional units.

   The building they built along Notre-Dame is a lot better though. It’s not a bad looking building aesthetically (although I hate the fake balconies) and is built right up to the sidewalk. Small store fronts were built on the bottom floor which have some decent commerces de proximité. The streetscape will look quite dense and urban once the new ÉTS residence is finished.

   The local stores, especially the ones in the older buildings nearby apparently aren’t benefiting much from the condos. A friend told me he asked somebody who worked at the (now out of business) Café Griffintown if business is doing better now that there are hundreds of new residents in the area thanks to the condos. He replied saying that the people living in the condos are like “astronauts”. “They get in the elevator in the morning, take it down to the underground parking lot, blast off in their cars for work until they return home, go back up to their condo and sit inside all night”. The only times they ever seem to be seen around the neighbourhood is if their dogs need walked. An employee at Café 1000 Grains (the former Émile Bertrand restaurant) echoed the same sentiment and said he has only met a couple people who say they live there since they opened a couple years ago.

7. Thanks for that. Can’t believe it’s been that many years. Of course, this is where Labatt Park was to have been, as well.

8. Going on St. Jacques West of Mountain Street feels like going down Churchill Boulevard in Greenfield Park, embarrassing.

9. I don’t get it, I think they look ok :\ I have to see that other building in Notre Dame to understand what you mean by good looking and bad looking. If I walk through there, I would not even notice those buildings (until now that I saw this discussion of course). I feel you guys might be a little distracted by the fact that they are condos, and judge it for that, in which case I understand it in a way. Having as many units as possible in a building is the best thing environmentally speaking, but the people that usually live in condos are not. Concerning aesthetics, condo buildings are very far from being the ugliest horrors in Montreal.

10. Maybe I’m wrong about condo buildings being the best environmentally speaking. I’ll be thankful if anyone corrects that :)

11. Not all condo buildings are ugly. But we can’t deny that the design of these buildings leaves something to be desired.

    For an example of a nice looking condo building look to Toronto or Vancouver, where their recent designs have been far ahead of ours.

12. “Blast off in their cars for work?” That amazes me. The whole point of living downtown, IMO, would be the convenience of not having to drive to work.

13. MTLskyline, I was chatting with someone from Toronto a few days ago who complained about how ugly condo buildings were over there. For me it was just the same thing. Nothing special. And I expected nothing special, after all, they are just condos. Maybe your tastes are too sophisticated for mine…

14. It s all kind of fucked. There are people who live in condos on the Verdun waterfront who have never walked along Wellington street ( I am tempted to say never walked the waterfront but don’t want to believe that, heh). Now would be a good time to be Groucho Marx and have a great line about membership, but it isn’t quite happening. I just don’t get it. I must just be from some way out there lunatic fringe that thinks when you decide to live downtown one of the pluses is that you realize you no longer need a car!

    *slaps self aross back of head*

    Ahem, ok, carry on.