{"id":2123,"date":"2009-02-19T12:47:53","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T17:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2009\/02\/19\/street-interrupted\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:23:20","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:23:20","slug":"street-interrupted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2009\/02\/19\/street-interrupted\/","title":{"rendered":"Street Interrupted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Condos<\/a><\/p>\n

Saint-Raymond is the little slice of NDG on the other side of the tracks, or as I described when I lived in the neighbourhood, the wrong<\/em> side of the tracks.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a terrible place. The residential streets are lined with post-war, Italian-style duplexes and could be called quaint, while the back alleyways, criss-crossed with laundry lines and smelling of ripe tomatoes in the summer are downright charming<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What makes this neighbourhood so hard to love is its isolation: Wedged between the train tracks and an impenetrable natural cliff, and cut off from the metro (and the rest of civilisation) by the Decarie expressway, Saint-Raymond is about the last place that anybody would stumble upon.<\/p>\n

On top of that, the main thoroughfare, rue St-Jacques, is the first entry point into Montreal from Highway 20 and seems to have been built for truckers with its garages, cheap motels, and fast food. I have even heard that it is a hotspot for prostitution by some accounts. With big box stores filling in the gaps (and creating other, permanent gaps with their ample parking lots) it is the only strip in Montreal that I specifically recall feeling uncomfortable as a pedestrian and cyclist.<\/p>\n

But Upper-Lachine road is the neighbourhood’s saving grace. Momesso’s deli and the NDG bakery are long-established Italian institutions that draw clients from beyond the local neighbourhood. Along with a hair-dresser, a tiny supermarket, a caf\u00e9 and a couple d\u00e9panneurs, Saint-Raymond is actually a neighbourhood against the odds.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago I sat in on a presentation of the McGill Urban Planning Master’s program about revitalizing Saint-Raymond. The planners-to-be hung their hopes on Upper Lachine developing into a viable main street. They theorized that, with the construction of the MUCH mega hospital mere blocks away, residential development could be in demand, and thousands of hospital employees on lunch break would create a whole new clientele for the businesses (although I wonder how many hospital employees would venture beyond the daunting overpass and underpass that isolate Saint-Raymond, especially with tidy Westmount village so close-by.)<\/p>\n

Then this happened:<\/p>\n

\"so<\/a><\/p>\n

Some time around 2006, I guess it was determined that pocket of land under this massive radio tower was fit for residential development.<\/p>\n

The architecture here is no treasure but the real tragedy is that this development turns a permanent blank wall on Upper Lachine road. It would have been easy (and probably profitable) to integrate commercial space into the southernmost units of these three buildings. In failing to do this, the developer, and the borough that rubber-stamped the project, interrupted the evolution of a more continuous Main Street.<\/p>\n

Where a fruit store, a roti shop, or a laundromat might have catered to these condo-dwellers and breathed new life into the area for long-time residents, we find instead three inhospitable blocks that are going to stay that way for a very, very long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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