Historic first in Montreal to counter urban blight.

[canuck]

This last week, the city of Montreal got an injunction from a Superior Court judge in a case involving a lovely building left for dead. The owners have 300 days to make good on the decision. They will have to rehabilitate the building to its original condition. Never has a judgement been so comprehensive. I hope this is going to create a precedent and that there is no appeal. There are a lot of these buildings in Montreal, and most of these are owned by folks who pay taxes on an empty but expensive piece of property, dont care about the condition or the blight on the neighborhood.

http://communities.canada.com/montre...n-and-now.aspx

[wolverine]

Glad you posted this. It's a situation we see here in the U.S. where historic buildings are purchased for future condo towers only to have their plans squashed by planning commissions or the economy.

There's two 4 story buildings in my neighborhood that were once occupied by 6 businesses and 150 residents. A 60 story condo tower was rejected for the site just after the owner had evicted all the tenants. Then the property was vacant [[though taken care of). Eventually they were forced by someone [[the aldernman? the city?) to reopen the buildings or else sell.

[canuck]

It's about time this kind of attitude gets taken care of. There is very little beauty in anything built since 1950. The proportions are all wrong, the materials are shoddy, the details non-existant, so that when we do have buildings with character, they should be prized, and given all the care they need. The more we accept sameness, the more difficult it is to imagine a possible alternative to the square BS we have been served.

[Magnatomicflux]

Would this effect decisions thruout Canada, canuck?

Unfortunatly Windsor has already wiped out most of her Gems or had them destroyed by fire. But the few remaining could really use this.

[canuck]

I don't know Magna, I think it's a provincial court rendering a decision on a municipal order. The couple of articles I read so far mentioned that this has never been done before in this city. One of the founders of Heritage Montreal, a conservationist org, and a pretty well known architect [[Dinu Bumbaru) commented the decision as more than anyone would have bargained for. So I dont know if this can happen throughout the country, but I hope it at least gets the ball rolling here. There is another building that was left derelict for 15 years or more downtown in the Golden Square Mile where the owner was sitting on it and now wants to build a 6 story condo in its place. [[Redpath Mansion)
The city stopped this because it blocks a partial view of the mountain from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts new Wing. The New Wing is itself a reuse of the Erskine and American Church on Sherbrooke street. There was a time when you could build highrises all over that area and they demo'd the older houses and apts for the eggcrate architecture we have become used to, even on the mountain's hilly streets. Now the height caps in Montreal are pretty severe and you cant build an office tower that is higher than the mountain at 737 feet unless it is in a lower part of downtown.

This is the church that is being reused as a museum wing of Canadian Art.
The Redpath mansion in the 1890's. It was cut in half and an apartment block
sits next to it now. Redpath was a sugar magnate.

[Detroitnerd]

Despite broad provisions for rehab as early as the 1947 Housing Act, the main solution to urban "blight" has been the 'dozer.