Monday, June 27, 2016

Glass and steel

I've shown this group of high-rises before, but I thought that this perspective was interesting. The buildings on the right and left are new residential mid-rises on the canal. The tall buildings behind are on the western edge of downtown. I was approaching the neighborhood called Griffintown at this point in my walk.

Lots of glass, steel, and concrete. The Bell Center (bottom middle) is the home of the Montréal Canadiens hockey team.

When Ken and I were in Montréal in 2012, we had dinner at a trendy restaurant in Griffintown called "Le Hangar." The restaurant is gone now, but I remember it being located in an old one-story building, surrounded by boarded up warehouses and vacant lots. The neighborhood was already changing, but none of these new mid- and high-rise residential buildings were there then.

6 comments:

  1. My Dad, who often had to visit Montreal, wouldn't recognise the place I feel...
    My brother still has the McGill University cap that Dad's colleagues in Montreal gave him on his last visit.

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  2. Condos have been le mot du jour and we may end up with a glut of them in the downtown core. Some owners are buying them as rental investment and one never knows who that short-term renter could be. One such landlord, renting through an agency, had the surprise of his life: three prison escapees were caught inside one condo and let's say the police and its special forces treated the place as a war zone.

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  3. tim, I walked up to the McGill campus later in the day, but I didn't go very far in because it's up a hill and I was tired.

    t.b., there must be a demand for housing, since so much is being built.

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    Replies
    1. Yep

      Quite a few millenials and Y gen who work in the start-ups nearby are owners of some of those condos. They can walk or use the metro to get to work and clubbing after work :-)

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  4. This is a surprisingly pleasing view. I grew up in an apartment with a balcony that looked across the street to another balcony (although the street was a bit wider) and I thought nothing of it. My first reaction here was to think, "Some view. Right into someone else's apartment." I'd probably adjust to it quickly!

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