WATCH: The Town of Mount Royal’s mega-mall plans include high rise condos, office towers, shops, restaurants, cinemas, a water park, a skating rink and much more — what’s the catch? Tim Sargeant reports.
MONTREAL — Just reading the details of this mega project is head turning: a commercial and residential plan for that includes high rise condos, office towers, shops, restaurants, indoor and outdoor cinemas, a water park, a skating rink, a performing arts centre and much more all crammed into a desolate industrial park in the Town of Mount Royal (TMR).
The $1.7 billion project, dubbed Royalmount, would be wedged in the southwest corner of the A40 and A15.
It’s projected to take up four million square feet built on a 2.5 square million square feet of land and include up to 8,000 parking spaces.
Essentially, it’s a city within a city.
“This is a property that’s designed to embrace people, customers, guests 80 per cent of the day,” said the mall promoter Andrew Lutfy, the Chairman of Carbonleo, at a Wednesday morning press conference.
“A typical shopping centre embraces customers maybe 20 per cent of the week.”
Concerns about traffic?
It’s estimated between 350,000 to 400,000 vehicles drive on the A40 and A15 per day and it’s often heavily congested.
Lutfy projected a five per cent increase in traffic volume and said he thinks many people will seek out the site as a destination, even if there’s heavy traffic.
“You’ve already got 400,000 cars a day virtually driving through the site, so it doesn’t increase any additional ‘déplacements,'” Lutfy noted.
The promoter has being buying up property in the industrial site since 2006. but until now, he said he hadn’t been sure of long-term plans.
Political reaction
TMR mayor Philippe Roy said he backs the project, arguing it will generate an additional $20 million in tax revenues, which represents about 25 per cent of the town’s annual budget.
“Obviously it’s a good project.”
“It’s a good project for TMR and also for everybody on the Island of Montreal,” Roy told Global News.
But Montreal city councillor Marvin Rotrand was not so keen on the project, as it has been proposed.
The councillor who represents the borough of Cote-des-Neiges/NDG, which sits adjacent to the site, said he fears the traffic problems will sky rocket.
“Despite the sugar coating, this is 1960s style development,” Rotrand said.
“It’s based on a huge influx of automobiles everyday.”
Public hearings, environmental assessments and decontaminating the land will all have to be done before the ground breaking can begin.
Promoters said they hope to start construction at the end of 2017, with an opening date of 2021.
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