Berri metro new development: critical mass starting to happen

How the area would look if the building, at top left, ever gets built

   Quebec's ever-iffy PQ minority government announced yet another spending plan Monday, promising to move Revenue Quebec out of Complexes Desjardins into a new four-storey structure between the Emilie Gamlin Square and the Voyageur block on Berri.
   The Voyageur block was, of course, the site of an incredibly overambitious French university white elephant project that led to much bleeding in the educational system here that helped spur some pretty intense student protests.
   The new $246 million project, to be completed in about five years, would entail the demolition of the buildings that are currently on the property, which includes the old bus station and a restaurant that once housed Butch Bouchard's diner.
   A developer had unfurled some other plans to complete the Voyageur block as condos so those half-completed concrete monuments will also one day be a cool building as well.
   The development starts to give some critical mass to the Berri and De Masonneuve area with the bus station, big provincial library, Voyageur block, Berri metro, Place Dupuis and a pretty big UQAM building all within a stone's toss.
   So Mayor Drapeau's old dream of building a significant downtown area in the eastern part of the city is finally taking shape.
   Seems to me that some underground tunnels linking the buildings would go very nicely, as it would be pretty cool to be able to walk from Place Dupuis to the big library, to the metro and so forth.