Port of Montreal to Upgrade Cruise Terminal
Just in time to commemorate the three hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of Montreal, the city's port has announced plans for rehabilitating its 50-year-old Iberville cruise terminal at Alexandra Pier in the heart of the historic district.
The St. Lawrence River cruise terminal handles 90,000 passengers and crewmembers per year from May through October. While other sections of the river are closed each November each year due to ice during the winter months. The Port of Montreal is open all year and the numbers of visitors have been on the rise. The renovation is expected to increased traffic as well.
The $78 million plan, which includes $20 million from Quebec and $15 million from the City of Montreal, will reconstruct the terminal's ground floor. The project will also provide better parking, widen the roadway for better traffic flow, build a waterfront park dipping down towards the river, open a gardened rooftop terrace, and create a new entrance at the shore side of the pier, which will make the area more accessible to visitors from the adjacent waterfront park.
The redevelopment plan also includes an observation tower, which will mirror the silhouette of a grain conveyor on a pier. The new tower will be complete in 2019 while the remainder of the renovations should be completed by next year, the port says. Work has already begun, and due to the construction, most cruise ships scheduled to arrive this year will call at temporary terminals set up at piers 34 to 37, several miles away.
Design is by local architects Provencher Roy. "From the project's outset, our aim was to extend the Old Port's linear park onto the pier," said architect Sonia Gagné. "We wanted to create a space that emphasises the historical richness of the area while also providing a park and a place to relax, which will allow people to have a place of their own."
Visitors to the observation tower or the park will also have a front-row view of Moshe Safdie's famous Habitat 67, a controversial assembly of block-shaped apartment modules built as part of the 1967 World's Fair.
