New construction at the Village Shopping Plaza

This was on 04 July 2026: after four months of not being able to go for walks due to a sprained ankle I am back walking and feeling pretty good. Remember the Village Shopping Plaza or the Robert Burns Pub, corner of Robert Burns and Cote St. Luc Road? It was finally torn down, the earth levelled, and a few weeks ago construction began on this new building. It will be eighteen floors of condos or apartments, 150 units, two basement floors for parking; as people are getting old they are selling off their homes and buying condos; it makes sense. There has been quite a lot of condo construction in this area and this was one of the few remaining empty lots. I suppose there will be a few stores on street level. 

                            Imagine looking out of your living room window and seeing a Hydro tower and live electric wires
                                                        a few feet away, maybe you'll be able to hear them buzzing ...

An article in The Suburban reads:

Also of note is the 120-kV overhead high-voltage line within the Hydro-Québec easement behind the building which will be replaced. Hydro’s plans to modernize the grid between 2027-2030 and convert the line to 315 kV, means replacing the current installation with a 65-metre high pylon, and moving the line 10 metres closer to the railway track. The move is required to accommodate the city’s and Hydro’s 27-km green corridor.

And what about those train tracks? On a regular basis I see tankers, each full of oil, passing within 100 feet of this site. I am reminded of Lac Megantic... I live about five blocks from here and I can hear trains passing. 

 

The Robert Burns Pub is no more

 

Nothing left but a pile of rubble. The Robert Burns Pub, demolished earlier this week, and derelict for over a decade, is no more. Now this corner lot is available for condos, stores, apartments, or whatever else someone wants to build here. Photos taken morning of 06 September 2025.

Rear of Robert Burns Pub from parking area, April 2015

Vincellli's Garden Centre, March 2023

I finally took some photographs of the old Vincelli's Garden Centre; they closed about two years ago. What you see below is about one quarter to one third of the size of the property, and public hearings on building a large condo building here are slated for this week. This is also one of the few unbuilt property lots in the City of Cote Saint-Luc (which is adjacent to where I live in Montreal); it is a mostly residential city but includes Cavendish Mall and Cote Saint-Luc Shopping Centre. Is this the best development of this property? Housing is needed, or seems to be needed, and a growing population means more tax dollars for Cote Saint-Luc. Of course, this might be considered a remote location in this area, but nothing is all that far from something else in CSL; and while there are some stores across the street from Vincelli's, out of five stores only two are still in business, so I am not sure if the commercial part of this development will succeed. I am also not sure other services are available for the future inhabitants of this condo; I expect they will be mostly elderly people moving from single family residences to condos. The development (one tower will have 8 to 12 storeys) will bring a lot of people and their cars into the neighbourhood; stores, bus service, EMS, infrastructure, and so on will have to be improved, or will have to be provided. Would it be better to make this a park instead of more condos? That won't happen because the desire for increased tax revenue is strong and there is no need to promote the area for future residents, many people want to live in CSL and residents are happy to live there. Personally, I don't like what I see slated for this site; if I lived in the area I would oppose it, oppose two years of construction, trucks, noise, pollution, and an influx of people to the area. But it is a prestige condo development as long as no one cares about the noise from the adjacent CPR rail yards. Consider a modified version a done deal. 

This is what is planned at this location

People have begun dumping construction material and other garbage on the site

There is a cardinal on the left, the site is home to many birds and small animals