Griffintown, once an Irish neighbourhood in Montreal, was rezoned for commercial and industrial use back in the early 1960s, and for the most part stopped being the close-knit ethnically Irish community that it had been for the previous hundred years or more. Now, Griffintown is the home of some of the most innovative high-tech companies in Canada. It was saved, perhaps only temporarily, from being re-developed, by the current recession. The plans that the city and private developers proposed were clearly on a scale that is not appropriate to Montreal and ignored the historical, business, and cultural development of Montreal by, in effect, moving the downtown core to this area. To some people it sounded wonderful, to me it sounded like a dog's breakfast of half-formed ideas that would not have served Griffintown or the city well. Griffintown is located between downtown Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, thus prime real estate. Some kind of development is inevitable, but it will have to be thought out much better than the proposal that was made for this area.
