Keeping Mount Royal Green and Lovely Is Non-Stop Work, But Worth It

Last night I was able to enjoy a view of Mount Royal that I'd never seen before--from the 10th floor of an apartment building near the bottom of the slope. The building is a condo that dates from the 1970s (whether it was built as that or as apartments, I'm not sure) and is far enough away from the mountain itself not to block views. As the sun set, the billows of green leaves looked amazingly bucolic, and yet we were in the center of the city.

That is one of the pleasures of Montreal, of course: that hill on the center of the island that gives the city its name. Part of it is park, part is cemetery and part is being nibbled away by development. On the north flank, plans are going ahead for the Université de Montréal to sell a convent school it acquired a few years ago and then decided would be too expensive to convert to classrooms and offices. The project will see the massive building--which the UdM is selling for $21 million, having acquired it for $15 million--turned into upscale condos that have the advantage of being just steps away from the Métro.

On the south, developers have just received a set back. The plan had been to change another former convent-turned-institution-of-higher-learning--Marianapolis College--in condos, and surround them with single family houses. Not so fast, the city said last week: converting the existing buildings might be all right, but not the single family houses also planned for the $300 million development (the land itself change hands for $46 million.) Go back to the drawing boards and figure out a better way.

It should be noted that neither project impinges on existing park or cemetery land, but each would modify the zone around the parks which conservationists insist needs to be protected. Neither school/convent complex should have been allowed to be built, but few imagined when they were proposed in the early 20th century that the city would grow as much as it has.

Holding the line here will make it easier to withstand the pressures that are bound to come in a couple of years time when the two hospitals on the mountain, the Royal Victoria and the Montreal General, see their vocation change completely with the opening of a Super Hospital.

Condos in the castle-like Royal Vic anyone? Who's going to say "no" to that idea?

Photos: Original Marianopolis project by Cyberpresse.com. The Royal Victoria Hospital and Mount Royal in 1890 from Archiseek.