Montreal | The bill for the restoration of the town hall continues to climb

The work underway to restore Montreal City Hall will cost 28 million more than expected, or 168 million in total, and will end 16 months late, in October 2023, revealed the administration of Valérie Plante during Monday’s city council meeting.

Isabelle Ducas
The Press

“The project budget was 140 million, but what we are getting today is a project of 168 million in total,” said Émilie Thuillier, building manager on the executive committee and mayor of the borough of ‘Ahuntsic-Cartierville.

“There is a lot of complexity in this project,” she continued.

Since it was announced in 2015, the bill for the project has skyrocketed. According to M^me Thuillier, four factors inflated the bill and lengthened the delays.

First, the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the site to close for seven weeks in the spring of 2020 and slowed employee productivity.

Then, “renovating an old building means that when you open the walls, you find old wires, old pipes, asbestos,” she explains.

Then, certain calls for tenders launched by the City did not find takers. The process had to be restarted, which slowed down several operations.

Finally, as it is a heritage building, it was necessary to find craftsmen with very specific skills.

“For example, we decided to restore the windows rather than change them, notes M^me Thuillier. But the craftsmen who do that, you can count them on the fingers of one hand. It’s the same for cabinetwork, marble, plaster, woodwork. »

The restoration costs of the town hall, a building that dates from the end of the XIX^and century, are equivalent to the cost of constructing a new building, or $1,000 per square foot, she also indicated, citing the cases of newly built municipal libraries.

“Limits to what you can spend”

Émilie Thuillier was responding to a question from the leader of the opposition at city hall, Aref Salem, who wondered about the multiple contracts where there were cost overruns, submitted to the attention of municipal councillors.

“We are accountable to Montrealers,” argued Mr. Salem. I understand that it’s important to us, it’s the citizens’ house, but there must be limits to what we can spend. »

M^me Thuillier promised to make a more detailed presentation of the costs associated with the project.

Originally, the renovation of the town hall was to cost 22.5 million. In 2017, the bill had risen to 88 million, then to 116 million in 2018. At that time, the City had established that the project could cost a maximum of 140 million.

Before the start of the work, in the summer of 2019, the municipal employees who worked at the town hall moved to the neighboring building, the Lucien-Saulnier building, which had first been renovated at a cost of 9.5 million. A municipal council chamber has been set up there for the duration of the work on the town hall.