Ground broken for Swatow Plaza in Chinatown

I returned from a six-week trip to China some three weeks ago, and the first time since then that I ventured in our Montreal Chinatown was last week. The first thing that I noticed while walking around with my camera was that ground has been broken for the Swatow Plaza (see a previous Spacing Photo du Jour post), a brand new commercial centre with a main entrance on St-Laurent (Google Maps), and stretching behind on Clark as well.

In an article by Spacing’s own Christopher DeWolf last December, the owner of Swatow, what seemed like any other import/exports store selling chinoiseries, said that he would invest $20-million into what would become a six-story building, complete with a supermarket and office space, and of course, shopping space.

I must say that I was a little taken aback by the prospect of a brand new commercial centre in the middle of Chinatown. Last Fall, I saw the sign just being put up for Swatow Plaza on the side of Chinatown’s less charming empty lot in the middle of Chinatown (only challenged by the former Sun Hing grocery store): I took a picture of it, thinking that in some twenty years, I would be able to show my kids what dreams of grandeur were like in the late 2000s, just like my father recently showed me a picture taken in 1984 of the sign for Kenneth Cheung’s doomed Centre Chinatown, a project that remained one, a block beyond Chinatown’s current eastern gate.

The same early 80s era did however see the construction of major buildings in Chinatown, like Chinese Apartments (1984) and Place du Quartier. In the next decade, a Holiday Inn would be built at the corner of St-Urbain and Viger, as the only major building project within Chinatown until Swatow.

Now that Swatow Plaza is becoming tangible, what will be its eventual effect on the dynamics of Chinatown? Perhaps asking the question the other way around would sound more appropriate?