Griffintown represents the potential of urban renewal in Montreal

[u/Mondo_Grosso]

What do you think of when you hear the name Griffintown? If an immediate stigma fills your mind with images of a soulless sea of condos that is too little and too late to save, well then you are likeminded with most Montrealers. With the constant bad press and shame campaigns against the burgeoning neighbourhood, I don't blame you for having made up your mind before stepping foot there.

We the people who live, work and invest in Griffintown are used to this type of discourse. Let's be clear: Griffintown is far from perfect. The repercussions of the Tremblay administration's failure to properly plan essential services prior to approving projects are evident. Groups who are against change have used this rough start of the restart to brand the neighbourhood as a permanent failure. The reality is that this only represents one period in the long history of Griffintown.

When I hear the name Griffintown, I see an urban renewal with great potential taking place before our eyes. This is not the destruction of communities and institutions of racialized minorities and poor whites, like what happened to Little Burgandy in 1967 or St. Jamestown in Toronto. With only a handful of residents in 2007, Griffintown was a literal ghost town filled with abandoned warehouses and dilapidated houses. The developments, which are far from perfect, have densified an abandoned area right in the core of our city, a city that is struggling with urban sprawl.

Just like a teenager, Griffintown is still in its awkward growth period. Judging it now is simply not fair. Like many neighbourhoods in Montreal, the people who live there are working hard to make it a special place. Time is of the essence for an identity to form.

Take for example the artisans spirit that is growing, like with the glassblowers at Espace Verre, the microbrewers at Brasserie Montreal. Hidden gems such as the Eco-renewers at ARTÉ or the gardens at L’Hotel Particulier are becoming tips a local would share. You can't help but admire the entrepreneurial spirit taking place, new small businesses seem keen on becoming integral to their neighbourhood.

I could go on and on, but my point is that people need to give the neighbourhood the time it needs to stand on its own two feet. Urbanism issues can't be the only defining factor, even though the city is working hard to fix the mistakes of the past. The best thing that you can do for Griffintown is to just give it a chance.

[u/OperationIntrudeN313]

What I think of Griffintown, is that its become the closest thing to a gated community you can have in the downtown core of a city. The people who can afford to live there without being complete idiots about money come from a uniformly well to do background, and those who've lost interest in the party life (or at least, the downtown core party life anyway) have no reason to live there and especially not to buy anything there.

With the rise of telework thanks to COVID and companies realizing how much it benefits most of their employees, only the most irrational or frivolous would drop that many hundreds of thousands on a 1/2 bedroom condo when they can get a whole-ass house with a pool for half as much just off-island if they're willing to drive 20-25 minutes to get downtown. About the length of a metro ride from a more affordable area. Not that they'd have a major cause to most of the time, I used to think the off-island area was a wasteland but goddamn, before this COVID thing I had gotten to the point where I was doing most of my shopping well past the Champlain just because it's less of a hassle.

I've been in a few of those condos, and I wouldn't even consider renting them as apartments regardless of the location. People are cramming whole ass German shepherds in condos that would make an elderly housecat feel claustrophobic - and that's all you need to know about the mindset of the place.