$120 million for Montreal Arts District

See what is possible when a city has defined a vision, established a plan and co-operation between the different levels of government as well as the community itself?

Quebec Premier Jean Charest said the parties involved have "an out of the ordinary will to do something that is going to be significant for Montreal and really leave a profound mark."

Do you feel that the secret behind Montreal's success as a municipality stems from the fact that they have this high level of government/citizen cooperation? Imagine what Windsor could accomplish if we possessed that out of the ordinary will to do something significant and leave a profound mark? We already have established the need, now we just need to rally community support behind a cohesive plan for a rejuvenated downtown. Then, will we be the next municipality getting media coverage of our huge windfall?

From CBC's website (thanks AC);

"An area of Montreal is earmarked for a major facelift after all three levels of government pledged $120 million toward the revamp as an attractive arts and entertainment hub.

Representatives from the federal, provincial and municipal governments vowed on Monday to participate and contribute $40 million each toward the redevelopment of a downtown area of approximately one square kilometre that includes the city's Place des Arts complex.

The revitalized entertainment district will be known as Le Quartier des Spectacles.

The goal is to improve the area that already plays host to a number of prominent events, including the popular Montreal International Jazz Festival and the annual Just for Laughs Comedy Festival."

Read the rest of the article here.

Rumours confirmed

It looks like Alan Halberstadt is somewhat of a clairvoyant. When we presented to council about the evils of the CoCoBox development on the border of Windsor, Alan launched into a pretty good speech about how the west side WalMart and the Huron Church/Tecumseh Canadian Tire store would like close and leave us with more empty Big Box stores to deal with. I guess he is right!

On a good source, I've been told that in addition to Loblaw's (which we already knew was putting a superstore sort of bigbox store out there) WalMart and Canadian Tire will be opening stores at the periphery of our city. Three stores filled, one to go.

I wonder what Windsor will do with all the empty Big Box stores in the city interior.

Oh yeah, one more psuedo rumour. The Home Depot store, which is moving out the SilverCity complex area in the 1st quarter next year, has already been sold to a new owner. Not sure who it is, but the rumour mill says Ikea has purchased it. We'll have to wait and see who buys that BigBox site -- but the papers are signed, sealed and delivered. Now it's just a matter of time.