The first phase of Montreal’s $7-billion, mixed-use Royalmount project is an 824,000-square-foot shopping mall that’s located steps away from the Metro subway in a highly trafficked part of the city.Agence Geminy/Supplied
As part of a new mixed-use project aiming to be fully carbon neutral, a snazzy new shopping and dining complex – dubbed Royalmount – has opened in Montreal on a site formerly dominated by industrial property.
The first phase of the $7-billion, privately financed project is an 824,000-square-foot shopping mall that currently has more than 50 stores, with more slated to open by this spring. Its developer, Montreal-based Immobilier Carbonleo Inc. (Carbonleo), expects there to eventually be as many as 170 stores, including 60 restaurants and cafés, as well as an aquarium. Carbonleo’s chief executive officer, Andrew Lutfy, has said there are also plans to add a luxury hotel and five Class A office towers to the site.
If all the project’s stages – including its residential housing component, which is pending approval – are built, the mall would be Canada’s second largest, surpassed only by the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta.
From high traffic to pedestrian friendly
Despite Royalmount’s aspirations to become a hip and upscale destination, the project’s location has attracted controversy in Montreal since it’s in a traffic-choked edge of the city. While it’s served by a pedestrian footbridge leading to Montreal’s Metro subway, it’s about 15 kilometres from the downtown centre in an area called Décarie Circle, where three heavily travelled expressways and two major streets all meet.
Royalmount’s pedestrian walkway is intended to make the project more environmentally friendly by reducing vehicle congestion and encouraging subway ridership. However, the 210-metre, $50-million pedestrian bridge was challenging to build, Claude Marcotte, Carbonleo’s executive vice-president and partner, says in an e-mail interview. “It involved co-ordinating design, approval and implementation with Quebec, municipal and community officials and utilities,” he says, adding the bridge weighs more than 12,000 tonnes and is made of steel, concrete and glass.
A carbon-neutral shopping centre
To reduce its carbon footprint and promote environmental stewardship, Mr. Marcotte says Royalmount is also energy efficient and has 520,000 square feet of parks, green roofs and native Quebec vegetation. “We’re also supporting biodiversity through 18,577 plantings and 20,000 rooftop bees,” he says.
Royalmount’s shopping centre currently has more than 50 stores, with more expected to open this spring. Eventually, the mall is expected to have as many as 170 shops, including 60 restaurants and cafes, as well as an aquarium.Agence Geminy/Supplied
To achieve energy efficiency, the shopping centre incorporates a heat-exchanging energy-loop system that will allow for a 93-per-cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, according to Pomerleau, Royalmount’s construction manager. The project’s developers are also installing electric-vehicle chargers and 566 bicycle parking spaces. More than 80 per cent of the materials and waste generated during construction were recycled, and the developers are seeking LEED Gold Certification.
“Our water management systems reduce indoor water consumption by 38 per cent and decrease rainwater runoff into municipal sewers by 83 per cent, conserving the equivalent of 5.7 Olympic-sized swimming pools annually,” Mr. Marcotte says. “All captured water is reused for irrigation of the site’s green spaces.”
In addition to its water conservation efforts, Royalmount is the first development in Quebec to track all its contaminated soil. “That way we know where the contaminated soil that was removed from the site went,” Martin Jacques, Pomerleau’s chief operating officer, buildings, says in a short video.
The demographic appeal
Eighty-seven per cent of local-millionaire households live within a 20 minutes’ drive to Royalmount, with the area having five times more university-educated residents than the local average, according to Carbonleo’s Mr. Lutfy. For those consumers, a building’s green credentials may matter, says Elspeth Murray, an associate professor and director of Queen’s University’s Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Social Impact.
“There are challenges to build sustainably,” she says. “For example, the upfront costs of building green can be higher, and it can be time-consuming for developers to assess different construction materials and processes to make sure they are actually building sustainably.”
Royalmount is served by a 210-metre, $50-million skybridge pedestrian walkway that is intended to reduce vehicle congestion and encourage subway ridership.Agence Geminy/Supplied
Ms. Murray says developers need the courage and capital to be able to “dig deep” and respond to new market forces, as well as the needs and wants of locals. “It’s a matter of tapping into the genuine desire among many citizens – particularly Gen Z and millennials – to vote with their cash and spend in places that are trying not only to make money, but to do better for the world in which we live,” she says. “This requires long-term thinking and a real commitment to doing things differently and more sustainably.”
Beyond sustainable building
While building sustainably is part of the transition to a net-zero economy, Benjamin Shinewald, president and chief executive officer of Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) Canada, says it’s only a start for eco-minded developers.
“The big challenge that building sustainably has is that often the planning and/or construction does not actually lead to sustainable operations,” Mr. Shinewald says. “You can’t just focus on design and construction – we must also look at how existing buildings are performing and maintained.”
For retail developments, working toward sustainability goals can help contribute to good marketing, says Avis Devine, an associate professor of real estate finance and sustainability at York University’s Schulich School of Business. She notes that existing malls should question whether they should become more sustainable as more projects like Royalmount are developed.
“A mall is more than a collection of stores – it’s experiences,” Ms. Devine concludes.