Finally, why on earth does there have to be a tram connecting Ste Catherine street with Griffintown? If everyone is so concerned about siphoning off people from the core, why are they pushing a tram link so much? The Bonaventure metro station lets out right at Windsor Station, a few blocks off. I would much rather see a tram connecting Old Montreal with Griffintown perhaps using a straight-line trajectory along Notre-Dame.

The Griff is the future Downtown Montreal :

It is important to realize that The Griff is the future Montreal signature, after several years of studies and urban analysis commissioned by all 3 levels of gov., the Société-du-Havre-de-Montreal issued its final report and recommendations, the most important of them all is the fact that the Montreal downtown core has no other place to expand but south i.e. towards Griffintown and the extension of University street.
Web: http://www.havremontreal.qc.ca

The future Montreal downtown core will be controlled by one promoter:

It seems the 1 200 000 ft2 comprising the future new downtown core of Montreal will be owned, controlled and monopolized by one entity, and guess what? It is imposing on city hall to proceed by expropriating up to 15% of the project area. But…

The promoter promises no expropriations:

On January 9th 2008, during the public conference Devimco held at the ETS, the president, Mr. Serge Goulet, promised there would be no land expropriations. This is quite misleading, as he did not admit publicly that one of his conditions to city hall is to proceed by expropriating up to 15% of the project area.
Articles:
http://www2.canoe.com/infos/quebeccanada/archives/2008/01/20080110-091300.html
http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/01/10/171283.html

The protection of existing owners’ rights and space:

Of all the concerns you raised, none of which are mutually exclusive, I find the protection of existing owners’ rights and space to be the most revealing of the promoter and city’s intentions, since this concern is the least written about. We are facing a veritable call to corruption as the promoter through the city, or the PPU (Plan Particulier d’Urbanisme), will be granted the right to expropriate up to 15% of the project area. Never has this happened in Montreal, and we risk losing an entire neighbourhood if we remain silent on this point come consultation time. With this power, the promoter will have the freedom to expropriate the remaining owners and exchange whichever parcel has no commercial use to the city so that the maintenance burden of that parcel will be shifted to public funds.

What’s best for one developer isn’t what’s best for the city:

Among other things, the promoter is imposing on the city to proceed with and via the Plan Particulier d’urbanisme (PPU), this implies that the local community has no say, and that the city has no urban planners. Normally, the city’s urban designers do precisely that: “Urban Planning”. What a contrast with the hell the city took ETS through when they wanted to put up their latest building!

Critical mass to get organized:

Griffintown is not a residential neighborhood as the Pointe is, so there will never be a critical mass to get organized. Residents and owners have to accept this as a fact, work harder, and plan consequently.

Devimco plans to build the big-boxes, sell the air rights to residential promoters, and dip into residential profits as royalties. Therefore, all projects that are not really profitable will have to wait, among which:
472 affordable housing units,
2000-seat theater house
Not very many residential projects can be profitable with the air rights and royalty costs such a project demands.

So, once again, here is Raphaël Fischler’s advice, an associate professor at the School of Urban Planning at McGill University, you’ve referred to in previous posts:
“. . Give city planners the mandate to prepare a Plan particulier d’urbanisme for the district that sets guidelines on local development based on what is best for the city, not what is best for one developer. Make one of these rules the prohibition against the consolidation of urban blocks (one of the features of the proposed project).
Exclude the possibility the city will expropriate land for a private commercial project. Decide now where a new concert hall and international student housing should be located (and decide that it be downtown). Enter into a binding agreement with the developer that forces him, on penalty of a large fine, to develop a mixed-use project from the start, and not build big-box stores without building housing, too.”

What about underground parking lots? Will they be paid for and run by the city, and cost us the same as downtown street parking???

When I mention gentrification done properly it’s where new investors come in and fix up derelict buildings that would otherwise sit empty or underused — not where they displace low or middle-income people. That’s why we look at things from a New Urbanist perspective; good development should encourage a mix not only of prices, but also building types and the intelligent use of spaces. In pre-WWII neighborhoods it was quite common to have “granny flats” that would be rented out; these are only starting to come back now as cities make intelligent zoning decisions about converting outbuildings or additions, for instance.

Yes, it’s important for all of the community associations to be involved, and we’re definitely behind the idea of co-ops, HLM and nonprofit housing.

The problem becomes when you stack too much of any one income type in one area; too much social housing and you end up with something like the western end of St-Henri, where a formerly bustling commercial street has almost no shops whatsoever; the same happens in a cul-de-sac development of McMansions. It’s just bad urban design and doesn’t generate a healthy neighborhood.

Sure, if more affluent people arrive (and they will) they will probably do a lot of good in the sense of restoring historic properties and allowing for more shops stocking decent foodstuffs and other goods, but the problem with “gentrification” is that it expels the poorer and more vulnerable citizens – tenants and in some cases owners of small homes – from areas, and makes them homogenous.

Indeed I have nothing against more affluent people settling in Griffintown – the old working-class neighbourhood was all but destroyed – but it is essential to fight for a more than token amount of social housing (co-ops, HLMs, non-profit housing schemes). And get onside with community associations in neighbouring southwest Montrreal neighbourhoods.