Redevelopment of Montreal’s Sainte-Catherine Street will be complete a year ahead of schedule, mayor says

The project to transform Montreal’s most iconic downtown street will be ready in 2029 – a year ahead of schedule.

That’s the latest update from the mayor’s office, which says the new timeline is thanks to an “optimization” of the Sainte-Catherine Street West revitalization project.

“This optimized timeline represents a major benefit for businesses, downtown workers, and all Montrealers,” the City of Montreal said in a news release. “It will reduce the impacts on traffic, noise, and quality of life in the city centre associated with a prolonged construction period, without incurring additional costs.”

The sped-up timeline is made possible because more work is being carried out, the city explains. It will also reduce the overall cost of the project “by avoiding the annual indexation of construction costs and by lowering the costs of site management, support, and monitoring.”

“Rethinking our methods to optimize construction projects is one of my administration’s major commitments,” Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada said in the news release. “We had the opportunity to accelerate this major downtown project, and we seized it. This decision demonstrates that with an Ensemble Montréal administration, Montrealers get more for their money.”

In addition to the wide-ranging revitalization of the street, launched by the previous Plante administration, there’s a plan to build two pedestrian-only public squares on Sainte-Catherine: Place McGill between Robert-Bourassa and Mansfield and Place Concordia between Bishop and Guy.

The pedestrianization portion of the plan will be done “gradually,” the mayor told reporters Thursday after speaking at the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal.

“We have to be careful if we pedestrianize it full-time, permanently: the street isn’t ready for that, the economic vitality isn’t ready for that. People aren’t returning to the city centre right now; that’s coming slowly,” she said.

Back when she was the leader of the opposition, Martinez Ferrada argued pedestrianizing Sainte-Catherine West would cause more congestion downtown and have a negative impact on businesses in the area.