The Royalmount, located at the corner of highways 15 and 40, will finally be inaugurated this week and accessible to the public starting Thursday. Led by Carbonleo, which manages DIX30 in Brossard, the megacomplex project that combines luxury retail and entertainment remains unfinished, and the residential component is still on hold.
So far, only the first phase is ready, and even then, some elements are still missing. For example, the giant aquarium will be built at a later date. As for the movie theaters, they will not be operational this week. The complex, which covers 7.65 hectares (824,000 square feet) and whose first phase was valued at around $1.5 billion, includes shops, restaurants, entertainment spaces, a linear park and a public art trail.
An opening press conference is scheduled for Tuesday, and the public will have access to the site on Thursday.
The project has undergone multiple changes over the past ten years. In 2015, the project called for about twenty hectares (2.25 million square feet of retail) and 13 hectares (1.4 million square feet) of office space with hotels and a 3,000-seat performance hall. At the time, Projet Montréal, then in opposition, slammed it. There were concerns that the project would harm Montreal businesses and create an influx of traffic in an already congested area.
But if some Montreal elected officials were openly opposed to the project, the City of Montreal could do nothing about it since Royalmount is located on the territory of the Town of Mount Royal, which authorized the zoning change and approved the project in 2015. “The project had to respect the urban development plan. And it respects it,” maintained Philippe Roy, then mayor of Mount Royal.
In 2020, Carbonleo presented a new version of its project in order to respond to criticism that it did not have housing on the site. The new version of Royalmount was to include 4,500 housing units with reduced parking. The company also built a footbridge over Décarie Boulevard at its own expense to provide access to the site from the De la Savane metro station in order to facilitate travel by public transit.
Luxury boutiques
Will the customers come? Carbonleo boasts of attracting high-end banners and offering luxury boutiques. Charles de Brabant, executive director of McGill University’s Bensadoun School of Retail, believes so, but he doesn’t expect the Royalmount to have an easy start. “What scares me a little is that expectations are very high for a very ambitious project, which has several phases. I can only imagine that people will be disappointed,” he says. “We will have to give this project time to take shape as [il a été] considered. »
But according to him, there is indeed a clientele for luxury retail, despite the rising cost of living that affects many Quebec families. “In Old Montreal, we see luxury cars driving around. I think that someone who can buy a Ferrari for $500,000 to a million can buy a Louis Vuitton bag for $5,000,” he says.
But the Royalmount is not limited to boutiques for wealthy clients, he recalls. “There is also an area where you can eat at relatively affordable prices and entertainment services, cinemas and beauty centres. It is a place of life.”
Jacques Nantel, professor emeritus at HEC Montréal, acknowledges that times have changed since the project’s early days. According to him, the “determination” and “resilience” of the promoters must be highlighted. “Anyone would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. They got through the pandemic and the rise of e-commerce,” he recalls.
However, he believes that the success of the project depends on the developer’s ability to carry out a real estate component of the project. However, the Town of Mount Royal and its mayor, Peter Malouf, elected in 2021, are still opposed to the construction of thousands of housing units on the site. Last Thursday, Mr. Malouf told Radio-Canada that he wondered about the benefits his municipality could get from it, worried about the costs of the services that would be necessary.
As for Montreal businesses that fear competition from the Royalmount, Jacques Nantel maintains that they have many other dangers to face.
A congested sector
The Royalmount project had raised major concerns about its impact on car traffic in this already very congested area. Carbonleo points out that several measures have been put in place to promote active and collective transportation, including the De la Savane station footbridge and easier access to the bike path network. The developer hopes that more than half of Royalmount visitors will get there by means other than car. About ten additional traffic lights should help to better regulate traffic.
Florence Junca-Adenot led a working group on mobility in the sector in 2019. The professor in UQAM’s Department of Urban and Tourism Studies points out that Carbonleo followed up on several of her committee’s recommendations by building a footbridge, creating an entrance for taxis and reducing the number of parking spaces. “They did what we suggested, even though we had no power over it. And they are ready to continue and work in complementarity with the Hippodrome project, which will eventually get underway,” she says.
What is missing, however, is the extension of the western orange line to the north. “Everyone thinks it is a priority […]but the project has disappeared from the Quebec Infrastructure Plan. It must be done as a priority. The orange line west-east is 64% empty in the most congested area of Quebec,” she laments. Like Mayor Valérie Plante and other stakeholders, the professor believes that the residential component is essential.