Support A Sustainable Griffintown — Come Down To The ETS at 7pm Tonight

Tonight, Thursday Feb 21st, marks the launch of the all-too-brief official public consultation process on Projet Griffintown. In a mere 6 to 8 hours of public discussion, the fate of a 200-year-old sector of the city will be decided. And Montrealers will have to live with that decision for the next hundred years. We had better get it right.

Questions have been raised by residents, neighbors, scholars and experts.

• First on our list are the absolutely undemocratic methods used to push this project through City Hall, circumventing normal oversight processes.
• Second, the character of the development seems to be completely foreign to Montreal’s DNA; condos and shopping malls do not a neighborhood make.
• Third, will this project saddle the city with another Olympic-sized debt, as it pays for infrastructure costs, and gives away cheap land to its corporate pals?
• And fourth, knowing the nature of the world to come — where cheap energy is no longer predictable, leading to problems in our happy globalized economy well before it “runs out” — is this project really sustainable?

We invite you to read the attached documents, which include the report from the city’s own Heritage Commission, op-eds from Heritage Montreal, architects / professors Raphael Fischler and Jean-Claude Marsan, urbanist Steven Peck, and residents Chris and Judith Gobeil.

Then, we ask that you join us tonight at the ETS (corner of Peel and Notre-Dame) to listen to the City’s and Devimco’s presentations, and then to ask some tough questions. We’ll be there: will you?

Avis Officiel du Conseil du Patrimoine (pdf, en français)

Des Principes à Respecter (Heritage Montreal op-ed from Le Devoir, PDF)

Projet Griffintown: Catalyse ou cataclysme? Raphael Fischler Op-Ed, Le Devoir (.doc)

Montréal mérite mieux (Montreal Deserves Better), Jean-Claude Marsan (.doc)

Projet Griffintown: Ce que la collectivité à a perdre (What the community stands to lose) (PDF)

Griffintown n’a pas besoin d’un mégaprojet