The developer of the Royalmount mega-mall is hoping to win over Montrealers’ hearts and minds by making the project greener and more pedestrian-friendly.
On Tuesday, Carbonleo unveiled version 2.0 of the vast project under construction at the intersection of the Décarie Expressway and Highway 40.
“Fundamentally, it is really about transforming this project into an urban forest,” president and CEO Andrew Lutfy said at a press conference at the company’s headquarters on Décarie Blvd.
With 4,500 housing units in 50-storey towers, the shopping-office-entertainment complex will have a woodland, central park and 3.8-kilometre pedestrian path, Carbonleo vice-president Claude Marcotte said in a lavish presentation.
Budgeted at an estimated $7 billion over the next dozen years, it is one of the largest projects breaking ground in North America, he said.
Some components have been scaled down from the original project, announced in 2015, while housing and green space have been added, he said.
The 7,180 parking spots, of which 2,250 will be for residents, represent a 40-per-cent reduction from the 12,000 that were initially planned, he said. Parking will be relegated to underground garages, with no cars allowed on the 23-hectare site.
Office space has been reduced by 66 per cent, entertainment venues by 34 per cent and stores by 30 per cent, he said. But with 1.1 million square feet of leasable commercial space, the retail area will still be about four times the size of the downtown Eaton Centre.
There will be just one 2,800-seat live theatre, not two as originally planned, and an outdoor entertainment venue has been eliminated to avoid competing with the Quartier des Spectacles, Marcotte said. Several hotels, a waterpark and a cineplex are still part of the plan.
There are no plans to include social housing in the project, he said. Since the project is located in Town of Mount Royal, it is not subject to Montreal’s proposed bylaw requiring residential developers to set aside 20 per cent of units for social housing, 20 per cent as affordable units and 20 per cent as family-size units.
As Marcotte spoke, five cranes, cement mixers, bulldozers and workers in hard hats busied themselves on the muddy site outside the eighth-floor windows.
“We’re right on schedule and right on budget,” he said, noting there would soon be 12 cranes on the site.
The first phase of the project, scheduled to open in August 2022, will cost $1.2 billion, he said. A second phase is scheduled for completion in 2028 and a third phase for 2033.
Marcotte dismissed fears the giant complex would worsen congestion on the already clogged highway intersection, saying the company’s research suggests that more than 30 per cent of customers and workers will arrive by public transit.
Carbonleo will spend $25 million building a 250-metre, covered pedestrian bridge across the Décarie Expressway from de la Savane métro station and landscaping the outside of the station as a public square, he said.
While the Town of Mount Royal has already approved the project, the developer must now seek the green light for the residential component from T.M.R. and the Montreal Agglomeration.
In January 2018, a report by Montreal’s standing committee on economic and urban development recommended that the project be sent back to the drawing board. It warned it could exacerbate gridlock, noted that environmental and health impacts had not been studied and said it was not in sync with regional urban planning goals.
Marcotte said the developer had heard Montrealers’ concerns and held several public activities to gather feedback from citizens during the past year.
Mayor Valérie Plante said she welcomed the developer’s efforts to make the project more socially acceptable.
“However, it is clear that these changes on the site do not solve the congestion in the sector,” she said.
She added that she was deeply disappointed that Carbonleo did not plan to provide social housing.
Sue Montgomery, the mayor of Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, said the project was “a car-oriented development from the 1980s” that would worsen congestion.
Raphaël Fischler, dean of the faculty of environmental design at the Université de Montréal, said that on the positive side, the revised project appears more ambitious on sustainability.
“On the negative side, the project is still a mega-shopping-and-entertainment project, a ‘destination’ that will rival with downtown to attract people to spend time and money,” he said.
“Can Montreal afford a project that is in competition with downtown, in an area that is ill-equipped, transportation-wise, to receive it?”
