image

Another bazillion dollar post. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been in touch with my city council person and during our conversation she mentioned that the would be buyers of the Plaza Pointe Claire (henceforth referred to simply as the Plaza) had dropped out, and she felt that if only there was a buyer with a strong vision.

As you can guess, I have a vision, but not the bazillion dollars to put it into action.

Here is the Plaza from the top:

Notice that it is in sort of square S shape, or at the very least a double zig-zag line with right angles. Parts of it are only one storey tall with other parts having an upstairs portion. Here is a limited view from the large parking lot that you can see in the photo above is in the lower left quadrant.

This gives you an idea of the height and breadth, and finally a photo that doesn't show much, but shows at the far eastern point of the Plaza is an out of business restaurant:

The restaurant was called the Calistoga Grill and was built with a performance stage that was opened up and viewable from an upstairs seating area, and they would have cover bands come and play pretty much every Friday and Saturday night more or less year round. I never went so I do not know exactly what it was like.

So the main part of my vision is to build a series of rental apartment units on top of the existing complex, having up to four additional storeys for the part of the existing building that is one level, and three storeys for the part that is two levels. I say rental units and not condos because there are already numerous condo developments in Pointe-Claire and not enough building of affordable housing.

The shape of the existing building makes it so that it is easy to conceive of each apartment having plenty of windows looking out either side of the existing structure, without having a lightless inner core of a much larger square building.

I would devote one wing of the apartment complex for new immigrants, having furnished apartments and charging them exceedingly low rent, but with the idea that they won't necessarily be there for long. 

I would provide all tenants of the whole complex, to the immigrants more often, to the others perhaps based on need, gift cards for the grocery store that is in the complex, and I would institute a Plaza GC that can be used at all of the independent stores within the Plaza (so exclude SAQ and Uniprix).

There is a restaurant inside call The Topaze that is an original one from when the mall was first built in the late 1950s, early 1960s, but it closed due to the pandemic. I would significantly update the interior of the restaurant, keep the same name, and make it a bit of a higher end restaurant. I would reopen Calistoga grill and I would hire as many of the new immigrants from the apartment complex as I can so as to give them a job right away that is easy to get to, and so that I actually have staff for my restaurant. 

There is a store called Steve's Hardware that had been there for decades but just recently closed. A large Home Depot opened up 4km away and that took away the little business that Steve's already had. I am less certain about this - reopening it as Steve's even if it wasn't a winning business? The couple who were running the store closed it because they wanted to retire and there was no one else willing to put in the hours it would take for the owners to keep the business afloat.

There are other things I have thought of; for instance, I know that it ought to be possible to build the whole apartment complex using tall wood building technology with the idea of sequestering carbon. If possible I'd want to have geothermal heating and cooling for the entire commercial and residential complex. Due to its wide open area with no shade to speak of, I'd smother the entirety of the roof with solar panels with the goal of reducing as much as possible the energy consumption of the apartment complex.

There is a question of making better use of the parking lot, by building something separate that is in the south west corner of the parking lot. I haven't really come up with anything just yet about that, as I wouldn't want to build anything that would be in competition with what is already within the Plaza.

Many of the stores within the mall are small independent businesses that have been there for decades and it is just amazing that they have managed mostly to hang on in the face of online vendors. As a bazillionaire I would cut their rents in half and freeze them for five years and only then start raising them again ever so gradually. The goal would be to try to maintain the Plaza as a great place for the neighbourhood even with the influx of residents.

With my love of table tennis, I would also have somewhere inside, perhaps taking the place of Steve's Hardware, or perhaps somewhere else, a table tennis club where I'd hope to build it up to have league play, coaches and elite player development.

I think that's about all I have for now, though I am certain I have more ideas about this mulling about.