Quartier Concordia

[LindbergMTL]

Des façades complètement vitrées, peut-être? Une bonne chose que cette rénovation extérieure.

[Ashok]

Dont know how to quote but this was in response to habfans - to demo the hall building.

 

No way! I actually like the Hall building, it finds it adds charm to the area and Concordia. They do need to do a major clean up of the building.

 

What would be nice if they get someone to re-program the elevators. You stand on the first floor, and there is already an elevator at the first floor. You press to go up, and it doesn't open. It waits for the other elevator, 12 floors down to come back down. WTF!!!??

[Ashok]

So if anyone noticed, they installed these 'art' installation in the tunnel linking Guy Concordia Metro with the Hall building. I am not sure what its purpose is. Maybe they are light fixtures - they are metals (maybe 1ft by 1ft) with pictures of houses engraved on them, put at regular intervals (maybe every couple of meters)

[Cataclaw]

The Hall buildings is being renovated and has been for years now. It's a slow process but it is ongoing.

 

Floors 7, 8, 11 and 12 are already renovated (and look nice and modern)

Floor 10 is undergoing renovation now and 9 will follow. The lower floors will be renovated as well.

 

The lobby and mezzanine are being worked on too (specifically, new escalators are being installed)

 

The exterior is fine in my view. A cleaning might help, or perhaps a recladding one day, but in my view it's fine the way it is!

[Ashok]

I search for a word – maybe retarded is best suited to describe the Hall Building. Why is it going to take them two years to install?!?! Even STM, who is notorious for taking their sweet ass time, would have those escalators installs in a matter of months. To make things worse, they box up the entire mezz and ground floor (floor to ceiling.) From the 9th floor onwards, you can no longer access the escalators because they are being worked on too.

[Ashok]

I agree with you Cataclaw. I think the Hall Building's exterior is fine. They should clean the facade one day though.

[Kotar]

From a Gazette article about de Maisonneuve

 

This week, the city and Concordia drafted a plan to widen the sidewalks and narrow the road in front of its Henry F. Hall and McConnell buildings. There will be more shrubs, benches and trees, too – a double-pronged scheme to make the front of university buildings more like a park, while encouraging people to use an underground tunnel instead of jaywalking.

 

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/grand+boulevard+emerges+downtown/5086413/story.html#ixzz1RuSKU4Il

[IluvMTL]

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Concordia+Student+Union+rejects+Faubourg+project/5472898/story.html

 

Concordia Student Union rejects Faubourg project

 

By Karen Seidman, GAZETTE Universities Reporter September 28, 2011 8:01 PM

 

MONTREAL - It’s back to the drawing board for a project to provide a building dedicated to student activities at Concordia University.

 

After years of work and planning, it’s not even clear if the students really want a student union building after the project suffered a major setback this week.

 

A proposal to buy the Faubourg development at Ste. Catherine and Guy Sts. was unanimously rejected by the Concordia Student Union at a meeting Tuesday night.

 

The proposed $54-million project was considered too full of holes to get a resounding recommendation from students, said Lex Gill, president of the CSU.

 

But Concordia will now pursue purchasing the building for its own academic needs, said Roger Côté, vice-president of services for the university.

 

“I encouraged the students to embrace this initiative,” Côté said. “I felt it was a unique opportunity.”

 

But because there is an opportunity to buy the building with a deadline of next April, the university will have to move quickly now to try to secure the building – located in the geographic centre of the campus, Côté noted – for itself.

 

“We definitely have interests in pursuing that avenue,” Côté said. “We would use it for academic purposes. We are always responding to and addressing the needs of the community.”

 

Students were far less excited about the project, although it was proposed by a committee made up of students and administrators who had been working since 2003 to try to secure a dedicated space for student activities.

 

“The students had never been consulted in a meaningful way about the project,” Gill said. “There were just too many unresolved issues.”

 

The student union has been collecting money toward a union building fund since about 2003. A $1-fee-per-course credit was imposed, which was raised to $2 in 2005. To date, about $8 million has been collected.

 

It was expected to cost about $32 million to purchase the Faubourg building, and another $20 million to refurbish it.

 

The CSU would have been responsible for $27.5 million, and the university for the remaining $26.5 million. The two would share costs and operation of the joint venture.

 

But the CSU had concerns with some of the university’s policies that would apply to the student centre. For example, security guards would be allowed to ask someone to leave the premises for not having Concordia identification. In addition, the CSU says revenue from certain retail space in the basement would go entirely to the university.

 

Centralizing student space sounds good in principle, Gill said, but at the Faubourg, students would gain only a few thousand square metres because they would lose existing spaces.

 

“And the spaces we’d be losing have social and historical significance to students,” she said.

 

When push came to shove, as it did Tuesday night, the students “just didn’t feel it was responsible to walk into a 25-year mortgage with the university on a project we’re not confident students support.”

 

kseidman@montrealgazette.com

[Cyrus]

After years of work and planning, it’s not even clear if the students really want a student union building after the project suffered a major setback this week.

 

I thought it was actually pretty clear "NO"...

[Alexcaban]

They are working on the side walk in front of the Hall building.