gee thats going to kill club soda and others.

A few wealthy people find the lower Main "gross" (just like they found Overdale, or the Quartier de Melasse gross) so they tear it down, and a whole bunch of poor people have nowhere to go anymore.

The Spectrum was also demolished towards the same end: eradicate the poor like bacteria.

In the meantime, our Financial Predators at the banks and in government continue to manufacture more poverty with their rich-o-centric policies.

Mtl Pool Room is still active but is expected to sell in Feb (again, according to Lalonde). The rest of the buildings are owned by SDA and vacant.

In short, the project is on hold and most of the block is in a state of neglect.

Christian Lalonde should be ashamed of himself, as a City of Montreal Urbanist and Architect purporting that office workers animate a street.

First - the street is already animated - AT ALL TIMES OF THE DAY. So from the get-go Mr. Lalonde's comment is a sophism.

Second - I invite Mr. Lalonde to take a stroll down Réné-Levesque or around métro Square Victoria. Sure, during the day, these areas are packed full of people, but come 6 pm they are completely dead. Is this the kind of animation brought by office workers that Mr. Lalonde is seeking?

I would not be surprised that, in a couple of years, we hear about how someone, somewhere, has illicitly made money off this redevelopment scheme.

These buildings rounding the southwest corner are architecturally significant because they stand there in a continuous line. There are few places where a stretch of turn-of-the-century commercial buildings still exist in a row like that. (Parts of Crescent, Sherbrooke near Concordia come to find, for instance. Of course, these buildings have been turned into high-end clothing boutiques and private art galleries.)

And I hate those pictures of various jazz legends on the side of the building at Jeanne Mannce and Ste Catherine. It seems to be well intentioned but it looks horrible.

Most of the info for that article came from this study, which was actually done by the developer:
http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/ocpm/pdf/P38/3b.pdf

It would be nice to have more "neighbourhood businesses" - one of the best was Main Grocery, the pioneer Middle Eastern grocery in Mtl. At least the IGA over at Place Dupuis has made it possible to get grocery/household staples (obviously Chinatown just to the south has lots of good greens etc). But some of the "green" businesses sound like greenwashing for tourists, not needs for people living and/or working in the neighbourhood. Which can also make it a more pleasant part of the city centre to visit.

Entertainment venues do come and go. Le Medley was another important venue, once Le Vieux Munich, which closed down just recently - one I'd actually been to.

How can Parc de la Paix be made more welcoming?

That being said, all I have seen over the last several years has been nothing more than closed and boarded up shops creating an area of town that is quickly loosing what ever vibrancy it has left!

On top of that, the construction on St. Catherines for the 2nd phase of the QdS does not help the situation.

Cafe Cleo - please step aside for the better of the Quartier.

As far as this project goes: why does revitalizing the area mean tearing down the existing urban fabric. The city NEVER learns. It is because of hare-brained schemes like this that we have such stunning parcels such as Overdale. In fact, much of the Guy-Crescent sector looks the way it does because of hasty demolitions of perfectly good buildings.