Multigenerational downtown community to encase public space
MELBOURNE: A multigenerational community is set to be built around a giant public park space.
The area around the Radio-Canada campus south of the Gay Village will become the Montreal “Quartier en Lumières.”
The neighbourhood will include thousands of housing units, a public park, and a community centre or library.
More details have been released about the massive development around the Radio-Canada campus south of the Gay Village in the borough of Ville-Marie. Montreal’s new “Quartier des Lumières” will include 2,000 condo units, 1,000 social housing units, expansive commercial space, and a central park of “over 56,000 square feet,” according to the project website and press releases from developers MACH and architects lemay. The sprawling space will also be host to new roads, a community centre or library, and even a new elementary school.
Among the new housing units will be a condo development designed by Provencher & Roy, the same firm behind the stunning new office space in the Montreal Olympic Tower.
The building will have a rooftop “‘urban chalet,'” a “series of terraces and green spaces,” and “an outdoor rooftop pool offering residents a breathtaking view stretching from the Jacques-Cartier Bridge to the downtown core.”
The Quartier des Lumières will bring human activity to an area long-blighted by industrial infrastructure and parking lots, and draw crowds south of the busy Ste-Catherine to the now-desolate René-Lévesque.
Developers are operating under a concept for a “quartier total,” “combining housing, businesses, offices and social housing” and making use of “social innovation at all stages of development and to integrate all the needs of the community in advance.”
The “complete living environment” will “include large green, public spaces that are accessible to all” in order to attract Montrealers to a site that has been “totally withdrawn and cut off from the centre-south for almost 50 years.”
The development also comes as the governments of Quebec and Montreal plan a rehabilitation of the East End.
In December, Mayor Plante shared renderings of her vision for rue Notre-Dame, which includes a new tram, bike and walking paths.
That plan also promises to better facilitate access between East End neighbourhoods and the Saint Lawrence River, which is dominated by port activity and infrastructure in the area.
It’s unclear whether the Quartier des Lumières will also bring people closer to the river.
