Depends, look at the U.S, certain cities are having more office space proposed and constructed than others… Mainly Southern, right-wing states and cities (Miami, Austin, etc…)
I really wish Montreal and Quebec had a more entrepreneurial spirit (and I wish the lockdowns never happened) because we will now suffer for a long time. I honestly doubt we will see a major office project for decades, I think that’s done here. Residential is a different story, but pure office towers? BN is the last one for a very very long time, unless pro-economic, low tax legislation is passed to entice companies to move here… But that’s also a pipe dream.
Keep in mind that here are a few factors that make Montreal’s situation different than some cities.
First, yes the long lockdowns in Quebec, some of the longest in North America, did allow for a profound culture of remote work to settle in.
Second, as an island metropolis, any construction to the few entry or exit points, like the tunnel La Fontaine, will be felt more by citizens. Mobility woes caused by construction encourage people to work remotely.
Third, like in most cities, companies now feel that to maintain employees, they need to be adapt to the new hybrid work model. As such, there is no longer a need for large office spaces, so we will continue to see reduction in space leased.
At that, I think your projections are exaggerated. We will see a few years of older office buildings being converted to other usages. By the end of the decade, 2027 the earliest, things should bounce back and we will see more office construction, but mostly in mixed use projects like Humaniti to start.
2027 is very generous, don’t forget the current political climate has stalled investments as well. Current projections have downtown fully recovering by 2030 at the earliest
I mentioned it before but I deal with major clients on a daily basis, lots of real estate players, lots of tech players, finance people, etc… A lot of projects are stalled, postponed or flat out cancelled due to remote work, the damage done by covid, the labour shortage, the political climate, inflation, the war, etc… Add what you mentioned, the homeless situation and the lack of care in the city, which further delays projects.
Mix-use will happen, office space will be minimal, at least 50K sq ft at best within a project. Residential will be very strong, especially rentals, hotels will also be relatively strong. I would love someone to be bold and build a massive office tower, but I don’t see that happening unless a miracle happens. We had a fantastic boom between 2013-2019, but things will be tough for us this decade, that’s just reality.
Tout comme NYC, qui a eu des projets majeurs de bureaux.
De toute façon, j’aime bien voir des tours de bureaux monter, mais s’il n’y a pas la demande, alors je préfère ne pas voir autant de ressources se faire gaspiller.
You may disagree, but every city that has made legislation like this has seen an explosion of office projects during and “post” covid, and this is coming from someone in the business. Also don’t forget, Austin is in a red state (hence state and cities). The South has boomed due to little to no covid rules, low taxes, weather… Our weather sucks, but we have the talent and global connectivity. We need to expand tax credits and find ways to encourage people to come back downtown and get cracking on building more.
Furthermore, cities also introduced tax credits for new businesses if they opened up shop there, either new offices or relocation. Unfortunately, Montreal and Canadian cities cannot do this, which harms us in a highly globalized competitive race. I can guarantee you if Quebec would allow a certain program with the proper law changes, businesses will flock back. Again, I’m in this industry, this is talked about on a daily basis between us and lobbied to the government, but our current government is doing zero atm.
If I did not love this city so much, I would’ve packed up and moved my HQ to a more business friendly place. A lot of companies want to do that but things are a bit tricky right now with our shitty global situation. If we want more stuff to go up here, we have to do what I outlined (and other stuff but I’m not gonna write a policy post here lol).
Sans diminuer l’importance que peuvent avoir de bonnes politiques publiques pour créer un milieu d’investissement générateur de croissance économique, j’aurais tendance à dire que de répliquer le modèle de croissance d’une économie différente de la notre n’est pas une recette gagnante. L’économie américaine est surtout une économie ou la croissance est générée par la consommation, la notre est principalement orienté vers les exportations (vers les États-Unis principalement).
Si les congés d’impôts accordés aux compagnies de technologie informatique ont réussi depuis plus de vingt ans à Montréal c’est surtout que le secteur était naissant à l’époque, je ne suis pas sur que ces mesures auraient le même impact aujourd’hui. Et compte tenu de l’incertitude mondiale du moment (qui devrait perdurer pour un bon moment tout de même), je ne suis pas convaincu que de donner des congés d’impôts sois le meilleur investissement qu’on puisse faire.
Finalement, si on regarde à l’échelle de l’agglomération, même si le centre-ville reste un immense générateur d’emplois, il faut tout de même voir que les emplois tendent déjà à se disperser dans le territoire (à tort ou à raison) avant la covid. Une chance qu’on a un centre-ville habité et de plus en plus à échelle humaine, c’est ça sa force en ce moment.
I never mentioned tax holidays, I mentioned tax credits (expanding them) and lowering them. I don’t agree with the whole “no taxes for 10 years” deals, even though they have been successful, they heavily impact revenue.
Expanded tax credits often leads to more job creation, renovations, expansions, building, etc… Lowering taxes and reducing red tape will show that we’re an easy city to build and grow a business of all kinds, big and small. It will mean more people will invest and re-invest in our dying city centre, it will force the city to properly clean it and maintain it and will lead to more consumer confidence to come back downtown. There’s also the issue of construction and transit systems being underfunded… The government has the money (they did spend $7B to give inflation handouts, which mind you, did nothing) to solve this, but they’d rather use it on useless things.
Government needs to be more business friendly, Quebec already has the most red tape on this continent and more has been added under the CAQ/Plante admin. Covid just ruined all the momentum and we have no choice but to rapidly accelerate the recovery. We have the tools, but we have incompetent leaders who have not listened to the business community nor the citizens and here we are at a standstill.
I’m sorry but this sounds like a lot of hand wringing for nothing. Skyscraper fans, definitely get ready for a bit of a rut. Especially for high budget single use office building. It’s over for the time being. But why do we have to fight this trend tooth and nail? If we lean into it and adapt the city centre to be a 24hr neighborhood with high residential density, it will be impervious to these kinds of boom and bust cycles. Downtowns like Calgary are not the future
Dying in the context of office space, and suffering because people don’t want to return to the office 5 days a week. Let’s remove it from that context entirely instead of fighting to win that demographic back. Stores that were not sustainable without that crowd will close. Restaurants too. In their place, new locations with a more mixed customer base of locals and commuters. Dying cannot be applied to an area with so much life and opportunity (and residents)
Not hand wringing, just using my econ degree and business experience on what works to get businesses back in. Like I mentioned before, residential will remain hot, same with hotels and small commercial spaces.
But what I said will definitely help downtown more compared to, say, a giant ring at PVM and 8 art pieces that cost millions and have done zero to bring people back.
The art piece were never meant to bring people back… it’s a plus value. The ring is mostly to attract tourists. Good if some workers come because of it, but it was never the intend…
Ça s’inscrit aussi dans la revitalisation de la Place Ville-Marie et de l’Avenue McGill College. Comme tu dis, c’est une bonification de l’espace publique. La présence de l’art urbain à Montréal est une très bonne chose. Et on l’encourage dans les projets publiques en général. Cet anneau n’est pas différent.
On ne peut pas artificiellement lutter contre les tendances lourdes d’organisation du travail. Les espaces de bureaux seront réduis. Le centre-ville existera toujours et va s’adapter, mais c’est une transformation à faire. On doit aller dans le sens du courant.
Si on souhaite attirer de nouvelles industries avec certains incitatifs fiscaux, pourquoi pas, on l’a déjà fait dans certains domaines. Ça peut compenser la diminution des espaces de bureaux. Mais on sait aussi les défis de maintenir cette fiscalité avantageuse et ces entreprises sur le long terme.
Intéressante conversation, mais il y a encore un bien plus gros problème que l’absence de travailleurs au centre-ville.
C’est que à la vitesse que nous faisons des enfants au Canada, comme dans bien d’autres pays, il n’y aura plus de relève pour faire fonctionner notre société comme on la connaît aujourd’hui. De moins en moins de femmes font de moins en moins d’enfants, qui à leur tour, font encore moins d’enfants, on se retrouve dans une ou deux décennies avec une société extrêmement vieillissante, qui n’investit pas dans la production et la création de richesse, et avec des infrastructures sociale et industrielle qui tombent en ruine.
Comme vous voyez, le peu de nouvelles tours à bureaux au centre-ville, c’est un bien petit soucis comparativement à essentiellement une transformation de fond en comble de notre société. Le manque de main-d’œuvre que l’on connaît aujourd’hui n’est qu’un avant-goût de ce qui s’en vient.
Si ça vous dit, je recommande de regarder les vidéos de cet expert en géopolitique.
The businesses didn’t disappear because they don’t force their workers to travel to the office. Bringing business back means nothing, they didn’t go anywhere. The workers are working from home and are pretty happy about it lol.
Given that public art is usually a rounding error in most budgets, how about we keep investing in it so that the city isn’t just one big grey cubicle for people to work in…
Even though the Bloomberg piece I shared said the opposite of what you’re saying… the Chamber of Commerce also wanted this as a project to bring people back and create “buzz”
All it did was mock us globally and what tourists came to Montreal to look at a giant grey ring lol.
I’m all for public art, but it’s been the main driver to bring people back for the past two years,along with these stupid “event passports” and whatnot… It’s not working.
It is funny though, seeing so many people defend public art and artworks compared to my solution, which was tried in many major cities globally and actually helped solved the issue. It does not mean everyone works in a cubicle or no more public art, but I’m not surprised people on here will misconstrue my words and come up with lame excuses.
We need bigger thinkers in this city and province, but sadly, big thinkers are not rewarded in our society. This might trigger some of you, but sometimes the hard truth is needed.
Of course the Chamber of commerce told that it was to bring people back, but necesserily only workers… You want to creat a buzz and that’s what happened. If you think people are mocking us ? Show us example, yes people even here laugh of it, but who care, talk about it and make visible. That’s what create a buzz mean. Of course there will be detractors, but hey, it bring attention and maybe it brought people that wanted to take a look at it, even if they thought it was just a huge c**k ring in the middle of downtown.
If it brought worker on the area to come see it fine. But of course the primary focus of that ring was not : let put that on so it will fill up the PVM.
And if you have so great solutions, let share them, start something, be part of the solution, don’t spit on what is proposed. Yes the government should do more, but only complaining about that the other groups can do, that are not public governement, is counter productive, since they have a very limited reach and some elements are not depending on them. Also, they have limited actions that they can do.
Nothing is perfect, but at least, it show that they try to do something, and it’s a thousand time then just doing nothing or complaining that the small actions that they do it useless.
My business is HQ’d in downtown, hundreds are employed there with six figure salaries, we retrofitted our spaces, added a lot of amenities and it has helped bring people back downtown.
I’ve lobbied the government of Quebec, the city of Montreal and other stakeholders to chop chop on real solutions, yet it’s either mediocre solutions or they stay silent. I showed them examples of other cities that have enacted policies and programs to rejuvenate downtowns and businesses with great success, they shrug me off. I’ve been at it for more than two years and it’s the same b.s every time.
I’m honestly heavily considering moving my HQ to the U.S with the Canadian HQ in Toronto, because there is a lack of care in this city and province, where they focus on other issues that are redundant. Toronto is a mess too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a global city. I chose to stay here cause I love it here, but business is business and love cannot blind you. A lot of people are feeling the same way and a domino effect is on the brink of happening.
If stakeholders actually listened to what myself and others have lobbied for and reduced red tape, I can guarantee you the city centre would be in a much better shape than it is today. But no, we keep aiming for mediocre and low energy solutions, it’s unacceptable.
My guy (or gal), I agree with the vast majority of your points and the approach you are pushing for, however, the way you’re coming across is slightly aggressive and condescending. Just something to watch out for because you clearly have a unique insight and it’s a refreshing one to see.
Gal, but also not condescending, just really frustrating seeing whats going on here. I do wish more citizens would voice these opinions or further push the government to get cracking. Now is the perfect time for heavy investment to keep us afloat during the recession too.
I’ve done my part, others in the business community have tried, but there’s only so much we can do you know? I’ve been patient for years now and it’s been affecting our numbers and if this continues, the BoD and upper management will have no choice but to move and no longer contribute. I don’t want it to get to that point, but that’s just how the business world is sadly.
