Montreal to Apple: “Non”
Posted on September 12, 2007
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Planning to open one of their sleek superstores at 1321 Ste. Catherine St. W., Apple Inc. is investing heavily, as always, in design. It would be a nice touch, the company thought, to simplify the look of the shop by getting rid of the three parking meters out front.
So Apple made Ville-Marie borough an offer: “three meters, $3 an hour, so many hours a week, carry the 3 …. we’ll give you about $35,000 to cover the lost revenue from those meters over five years. How about it?”
The Apple zealots who refer to a certain enormous West Coast software company as “the evil empire” can know nothing of Ville-Marie bureraucrats. The default mode in Montreal is “non,” and that’s what the borough promptly said to Apple, La Presse reported.
Bureaucrats have no sense of style.
The only reason The Gazette can come up with for this decision is that the Montreal politico’s are staid, inflexinbe boors. Well, they are quoted as saying: “We’ve never done it before, so we can’t.” but maybe there’s another reason.
Much as we all hate them, the purpose of parking meters is both to generate revenue for the city and also generate revenue for the businesses in the area. Parking meters are designed to prevent people from parking all day; car turn-over equals consumer turn-over in the area. The meters may only generate #35k a year but I suspect the loss of the parking spaces would negatively impact the dollars coming into the area, if even negligibly.
Besides, what’s wrong with parking in front of the Apple store? Seems like a good place to me.
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