A breath of fresh air for the Griffintown neighbourhood

A breath of fresh air
for the Griffintown neighbourhood

Our various teams at FNX-INNOV are currently working on the revitalization of Montreal’s Griffintown district, a strategic area located near downtown that has seen a significant increase in activity since the late 1990s.

Once a working-class neighbourhood, Griffintown has long been the stronghold of Montreal’s Irish community, the immigrants who contributed greatly to the construction of the Lachine Canal and the Victoria Bridge. In the middle of the 20th century, the city expropriated a large part of the residents to establish an industrial zone in this strategic area. However, the decline of a large number of industries has undermined the development of the district, which has gradually turned into a largely abandoned industrial area. However, the arrival of the École de technologie supérieure and the Cité du multimédia at the end of the 1990s announced the return to life of this neglected sector.

Over the past ten years, the City of Montreal has implemented a special urban planning program and Griffintown has been seized by a major residential and commercial development. This program aims to restore the sector’s residential vocation, while promoting innovation and sustainable development. It includes street and underground infrastructure redevelopment, but also the creation of parks and cultural spaces. Our experts in several disciplines have been working since 2015 on the planning and implementation of a significant part of this major urban project. The infrastructure, mobility and land-use planning teams worked together to facilitate this major project.

Recently, the opening of Shannon and Murray Streets provided an insight into the scope of the transformations to come. Murray Street is the first all-pedestrian street in the neighbourhood, and it also demonstrates our innovative practices in terms of optimal rainwater management. Its distinctive visual signature, with numerous planting pits and permeable paving developed in collaboration with the ABS Group, meets the initial objective of providing a living space that respects sustainable development. Our urban infrastructure teams were honoured at the AFG Grand Prix for the construction of a microtunnelling sanitary collector, which we designed and supervised.

Congratulations to all the collaborators for this beautiful project to revitalize a strategic neighbourhood for Montreal, we can be proud of our contribution to making this area more livable!