Of all the streets to move to in Montreal in the summer of 2016, Arlene Baco chose one of the worst.
With her one-year-old son in tow, Baco and her partner drove in from Ottawa in June and pulled up to their new apartment, a three-storey walk-up on St-Denis St., smack in the middle of one of the busiest construction sites in the city. The six lanes in front of their home had been reduced to two with traffic running in both directions, meaning no place to stop the moving van. In the congested Plateau neighbourhood, they ended up having to park two blocks away, then haul all their furniture and boxes on foot, the last stretch up a fenced-in segment of sidewalk barely wide enough for two pedestrians to pass, much less new arrivals bearing beds and a baby.
“It really wasn’t a good time for us to move, but we had no choice,” Baco said last week, the background cacophony of construction noise colluding to drown out her words.
A busy urban boulevard at the best of times, the two-block stretch of St-Denis St. between Duluth Ave. and Marie-Anne St. has become a loud, congested mess as the city spends $14.4 million to replace sewage pipes almost as old as Canada, as well as water pipes, electric lines and lampposts. Originally conceived as a two-year project, contractors are working on an accelerated timetable to try to complete the infrastructure repairs in one year and finish by November, to lessen the suffering for merchants and residents.
The work is going faster than anticipated, but the increased productivity also means more noise, more dust and fewer customers. Front end loaders rolling on steel tank treads rev and squeal incessantly. Bucketloads of dirt, gravel and rock thunder and clang as they’re dropped into dump trucks, followed by the ubiquitous “beep-beep-beep” of reversing trucks.
“It’s loud,” Baco said. “It’s so loud all the time, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. most days.”
“This is nothing,” said Lucille Guarna, who works at a design studio on the street. “You should hear it when the jackhammers are going. It’s not just the noise. It’s the ground shaking all around you.” Guarna has been working there for about a year, which means almost her entire Plateau working career has been enveloped in a constant din.
“I’m eager for it to be over,” she said.
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“We have lost a lot of clientele,” L’Barouf owner Mehdi says. “For the first six months, when construction was on our side of the street, nobody came in because nobody would walk on the narrow sidewalk.”
The noise pollution is draining in its constancy, both mentally and physically. Terrasses on the street are empty. As are the stores, the jewelry shops and opticians and clothing boutiques populated solely by bored cashiers whiling away the days on their smartphones. Many are closed, “For Rent” signs on their storefronts, and in the windows of the empty apartments above them.
“There’s nobody here,” commented two older women walking up Duluth and onto St-Denis.
It’s better for Baco now that the work has been completed on her side of the street. Before, there was just a narrow corridor of sidewalk between her and the fenced-off construction zone, hard to navigate with a baby stroller. Construction workers helped to lift her stroller over rough spots, and the city has been diligent about contacting her to warn the water is about to be cut off.
“The city has been doing a good job,” she said, noting that the construction on her side of the street finished a week ahead of schedule, thanks in part to bonuses for quick work and financial penalties for lateness pencilled into the contract.
But a glance into Bar L’Barouf, a Parisian-style brasserie with cane chairs and a soft hue cast by its amber-wood interior, shows the damage wrought by years of city neglect that necessitated the year-long reconstruction of St -Denis. In a bar that could easily hold 100 patrons or more, only three men sit on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, sipping on pints as the dust and din blow in through L’Barouf’s wide-open windows and suffocate its ambience.
“We have lost a lot of clientele,” says owner Mehdi. “For the first six months, when construction was on our side of the street, nobody came in because nobody would walk on the narrow sidewalk.” With no parking on the street and little to be had on adjoining streets, and nobody in the adjoining stores, customers stopped coming. There has been no financial aid or tax breaks from the city for business owners.
“The work had to be done,” said Mehdi, wiping the bar in an establishment whose name translates to “commotion” or “racket,” a place where once it could be hard to find a seat, but is now quiet.
“But I hope things get better. They have to.”
THE PROJECT: Replacing pipes, underground wiring, lampposts and asphalt on St-Denis St. between Duluth Ave. and Marie-Anne St.
PROJECTED COST: $14.4 million
DATE STARTED: Fall 2015
PROJECTED END DATE: November 2016
PROGRESS UPDATE: Workers connected new water conduits under the western half of St-Denis St., replaced wiring for lampposts along the road and replaced natural gas lines that run parallel to the street.
