1 Van Horne - 7 étages

[Doctor D]

CBC Aujourd hui https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6573911

[denpanosekai]

related article
https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/753078/l-entrepot-van-horne-pourrait-etre-transforme-en-hotel-et-espace-commercial

 

[swansongtoo]

Love this writer. 

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-leave-it-to-cbcs-rage-detectors-to-deify-derelict-montreal-building

Colby Cosh: Leave it to CBC's rage detectors to deify derelict Montreal building 

How dare owners of graffiti laden building used for document storage want to convert into a hotel? 

Author of the article:

Colby Cosh

Publishing date:

Sep 08, 2022  •  3 hours ago  •  3 minute read  •   Join the conversation 

Article content

I am not as closely in touch with Quebec as a good Canadian columnist ought to be, but I’ve found my head turned by a classic development fight happening in Montreal. It concerns the handsome Van Horne warehouse in the city’s Mile End neighbourhood, a favourite piece of scenery that is also something of a “scary,” derelict dead spot. The current owners use the giant graffiti-covered warehouse for document storage, so there’s minimal activity, even from employees going to and fro. Feeling imaginative, they recruited a brilliant designer of bar, restaurant and hotel interiors, Zébulon Perron, to devise a plan to turn the handsome monster into a hotel with some office space, a rooftop patio and retailers on the main floor. Perron and his architect partner, Thomas Balaban, are from Mile End, and they have worked with locals on their plan. They claim to be especially protective of the building’s water tower, one of the last still visible on the Montreal skyline.

Developers and creatives holding a sheaf of artist’s renderings are certainly to be regarded with mistrust, but Perron has a pretty remarkable track record: if you live in a city that has wandered from the tradition of esthetically spectacular bars (once especially strong on the West of the continent), you can only view his work with envy. This might lead the naive to conclude that Mile End was lucky to have Perron’s attention. Le Devoir’s Tuesday piece on the project reflected cautious optimism from local residents. But CBC News took a typical approach of running its rage detector over the neighbourhood.

A hotel and some shops, we are told by one Mile Ender, would “convert” the neighbourhood to a repulsive and tainted “commercial” zone. Another raised the “gentrification” banner: “It’s this point of view,” Thomas Duret told the CBC, “like, ‘Let’s buy this. It’s empty, it looks trashy, we’ll make it for rich people’ and it actually kills the neighbourhood.” Something in our heart does stir at this courageous defence of trash, but we wonder whether Duret thinks document storage is mostly used by the poor. In any event, he added an irrelevant complaint that “shared spaces” are disappearing (perhaps this is an objection to the sharing of graffiti tags?) and grumbled that the building ought to be turned into affordable housing — something that was actually already tried and proved unsuccessful because of zoning limitations (surprise!) and opposition from Héritage Montréal.

Renters are bound to resist gentrification wherever it rears its head, we suppose. And us free marketers have a grouchy prejudice in favour of putting real estate to its highest-value uses, to say nothing of basic property rights. As far as heritage preservation goes, the worst possible thing that can happen to an old building is to become genuinely derelict, as money-losing properties frozen in place will generally do. Fires and structural issues are often not very far behind. One gets the sense that some of the people in Mile End heaping abuse on their local councillor would actually prefer the building to become empty and, perhaps, colonized by squatters. No risk of gentrification from them!

Unsurprisingly, the politics of Montreal give these reactionaries enormous power to thwart projects like this one. As the CBC observes, the plan first has to pass muster with a “consultative” planning committee that includes local residents; it then has to get clearance from a “public assembly” in which opponents are bound to be overrepresented. Meanwhile, approximately two-thirds of the Canadian public sits around wondering why real estate’s so gosh darn pricey. Otiose zoning and fanatic NIMBYs aren’t the only reason, but you can’t connect the housing-crisis dots (in the parts of the country that have a housing crisis) without them.

National Post

[SameGuy]

Otiose. Triple word score there.

[Né entre les rapides]

Il y a 2 heures, swansongtoo a dit :

Love this writer. 

 

Il y a 2 heures, SameGuy a dit :

Otiose. Triple word score there.

"Otiose": I bet that 95% of the Toronto crowd  do not know the meaning of this archaic term.  Just a scholarly toned finishing line for an article which primary purpose is to distract Torontonians from their own woes.

[universityst]

14 hours ago, Né entre les rapides said:

 

"Otiose": I bet that 95% of the Toronto crowd  do not know the meaning of this archaic term.  Just a scholarly toned finishing line for an article which primary purpose is to distract Torontonians from their own woes.

How after reading such an article the only thing you considered interesting to write is another Toronto hating mini tirade is beyond me... inferiority complex!

[SameGuy]

The writer is neither wrong about otiose zoning and fanatical Nimbyism in Montreal, nor how the same problem affects housing prices in all large cities on this continent. It is a fairly simple, straightforward observation.

[Né entre les rapides]

il y a une heure, universityst a dit :

How after reading such an article the only thing you considered interesting to write is another Toronto hating mini tirade is beyond me... inferiority complex!

You are perfectly right to say that I wrote a Toronto bashing mini tirade, but that was  simply tit for tat for the innumerable negative comments about Montreal by Toronto-based authors.  I like Toronto as a city, but not so much the disdain so often displayed toward Montreal.  There are exceptions, but not in sufficient instances to counterbalance  the others.  Now, if we were to assess an inferiority complex on the basis of opinions or articles bashing the other city, I would suggest that Toronto wins all the way.

As for the whole article, I read it with interest, it contains many truths.  But it is not just in Montreal.  And not just in Canada.  

[internationalx]

Read the article before I saw this thread... not once did I sense a "Montreal bashing" sentiment.  If anything, it was CBC-bashing, anti-gentrification bashing, and also, making some fair observations about the politics of development in Montreal.   Just the other day, I made  similar comments to another Montrealer about development in the city.  

[Normand Hamel]

Le 2022-09-08 à 18:13, swansongtoo a dit :

Meanwhile, approximately two-thirds of the Canadian public sits around wondering why real estate’s so gosh darn pricey. Otiose zoning and fanatic NIMBYs aren’t the only reason, but you can’t connect the housing-crisis dots (in the parts of the country that have a housing crisis) without them.

Je suis d'accord avec l'ensemble des propos de l'article sauf ces deux phrases écrites par quelqu'un qui de toute évidence connait mal Montréal. De plus ces deux phrases parlent en fait de problèmes distincts: l'accès à la propriété et la crise du logement. Il ne faut pas confondre les deux, surtout en ce qui concerne Montréal.

Même si toutes les grandes villes du Canada traversent une crise du logement Montréal demeure une ville accessible avec une enviable mixité sociale. Hélas on ne peut en dire autant de Toronto et Vancouver qui sont aujourd'hui inabordables et où seuls les gens les plus fortunés peuvent résider à moins d'y avoir déjà une propriété depuis longtemps.

La crise du logement à Montréal pourrait se solutionner avec un effort concerté des trois paliers de gouvernement et des contracteurs mais cela me parait plus compliqué pour Toronto et Vancouver où les prix des loyers sont au départ beaucoup trop élevés. Les logements y sont beaucoup plus rares aussi.

Pour ce qui est de l'accès à la propriété, ici à Montréal on peut encore rêver d'acquérir une résidence alors que là-bas cela devient de plus en plus une utopie. And by the way cela n'a rien à voir avec le zonage et le syndrome NIMBY.