{"id":290,"date":"2007-11-23T15:13:40","date_gmt":"2007-11-23T19:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=290"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:45:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:45:13","slug":"reaction-to-the-griffintown-mega-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/11\/23\/reaction-to-the-griffintown-mega-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaction to the Griffintown mega-development"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since news broke yesterday afternoon with details about Devimco’s plan to massively redevelop Griffintown<\/a>, the blogosphere has been abuzz with reaction. <\/p>\n

Some are concerned about the effect on current Griffintown residents. Although Devimco insists that no homeowners will be expropriated<\/a>, Kristian Gravenor isn’t buying that assurance at face value<\/a>. He has lived through the Overdale boondoggle, in which an entire nineteenth-century downtown block was demolished, and hundreds of residents evicted, for a luxury property development that never materialized. “[Some] suspect that this will end badly, that they’ll kick people out and the developers will run out of money as they always do and leave everybody miserable and the place looking like Dresden in 1946,” he writes.<\/p>\n

AJ Kandy, over at Save Griffintown, has been running images and maps of the proposed development<\/a> on his blog, pointing out and commenting on some elements of the design. He also writes a more substantial critique of the plan at Urbanphoto, where he raises some very interesting points:<\/p>\n

Why the megablocks? The design currently imposes some superblocks onto existing streets, blocking Shannon and Young. The plan view can be misleading, seeming to show through streets in the two large residential-commercial buildings, but these are actually sky terraces for the tower dwellers. Surely the same amount of space could be incorporated with more, smaller buildings, on more intimately scaled streets, and preserving the historic street grid?<\/p>\n

Why \u2018Towers in the park?\u2019 Good retail urban design involves building right to the sidewalk, and lining the streets with shops, windows and displays. The current \u201csuperblock\u201d design would seem to impose a lot of blank walls on side streets, and further separates the buildings from the streets with berms and plazas. The same seems to go for some of the smaller apartment buildings to be built canalside – creating isolated, \u201cHabitations Jeanne Mance\u201d dead zones, instead of lively \/ leafy \/ intimate streets. The city of Portland in fact discourages new commercial buildings without providing for \u201cliving streets\u201d in this fashion, and it\u2019s something we should look at here. <\/p>\n

Why the secrecy? Why was this project developed behind closed doors for so long? According to the Sud-Ouest borough mayors\u2019 office there will be public consultations in either December or January, and a decision has to be made by April\u2026a bit rushed for something that affects something so important, no?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Finally, Kate McDonnell at the Montreal City Weblog rues the inevitably corporate flavour<\/a> of this development. “What makes me saddest about this kind of megadevelopment, even more than the knowledge that it brings more suburban values right into the heart of town, is that such developments are relentlessly corporate. Where’s the space for the used bookshop, the neighbourhood caf\u00e9, the ethnic chicken rotisserie?” she asks. <\/p>\n

I wouldn’t be quite so pessimistic. The plans are, on the surface, much better than they could have been. They are high-density, at the very least, with important pedestrian and transit connections and significant attention paid to the public sphere. But they’re still rough: they obviously aren’t finalized, which means that citizens and urban planning experts both need to weigh in to make sure that Griffintown is redeveloped in the best way possible. Without a comprehensive and inclusive planning process, this project risks being a failure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since news broke yesterday afternoon with details about Devimco’s plan to massively redevelop Griffintown, the blogosphere has been abuzz with reaction. Some are concerned about the effect on current Griffintown residents. Although Devimco insists that no homeowners will be expropriated, Kristian Gravenor isn’t buying that assurance at face value. He has lived through the OverdaleContinue reading “Reaction to the Griffintown mega-development”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7839,7842],"tags":[9,1121,36,1014,272,1123,275,5,1120,1124,45,1122],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-housing","category-neighbourhoods","category-urban-design","tag-development","tag-dresden","tag-griffintown","tag-jeanne-mance","tag-kate-mcdonnell","tag-kristian-gravenor","tag-montreal-city","tag-planning","tag-portland","tag-retail-urban-design","tag-revitalisation","tag-sud-ouest"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReaction to the Griffintown mega-development - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2007\/11\/23\/reaction-to-the-griffintown-mega-development\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reaction to the Griffintown mega-development - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Since news broke yesterday afternoon with details about Devimco’s plan to massively redevelop Griffintown, the blogosphere has been abuzz with reaction. 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