Despite the opinion of the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM), the City of Montreal intends to move forward with the adoption of a by-law limiting the number of floors of Tower 6 of Square Children’s to four. . The City believes that it is in the interest of Montrealers to make such a decision. Without social housing, the construction of a 20-storey apartment tower is not justified, supports the administration of Valérie Plante.
During a special meeting, the executive committee will ratify on Friday the by-law adopted at first reading in September 2019. This by-law imposed on the developer High-Rise Montréal (HRM) a maximum of four floors for Tower 6 of the building complex located on the site of the former Montreal Children’s Hospital. The by-law will be submitted for approval by city council next week.
“We are not going there lightly, but we are going there very resolutely. We are certain that this is the thing to do”, indicates to the To have to Councilor Robert Beaudry, responsible for urban planning on the executive committee. “Because of what we heard during the OCPM consultations and read in the report [de l’OCPM], with the uneasiness of the population and the players in the community, it is obviously a social contract that has been broken, a social contract that had been put in place at the time to make people accept that there are more density in the sector, on the ultimate condition that there was going to be a social mix. »
In its report filed a little over two weeks ago, the OCPM nevertheless deemed it “premature and inappropriate” to limit the height of Tower 6, considering that such a regulation would prevent any possibility of social housing being built on the site of the old hospital. In addition, the OCPM pointed out, the by-law proposed by the City is not based on any other concrete project and does not include any timetable.
Remember that originally, the Tower 6 project of HRM, a company controlled by Philip Kerub and Sarto Blouin, was to have 20 floors and accommodate 174 social housing units. Since the City and the promoter never managed to agree on the terms and conditions for the construction of these units, this component was finally abandoned.
In the spring of 2021, the developer went to Superior Court to strike down the proposed 2019 bylaw limiting the height of Tower 6. And last January, the developer filed a $20 million lawsuit against the Ville and Mayor Plante, accusing them of “disguised expropriation”. These disputes are still before the courts.
Laborious negotiations
In its defense filed in court in response to HRM’s originating application, the City alleges that it conducted multiple negotiations to try to reach an agreement with the developer regarding the social housing project.
It maintains that it succeeded in modifying the parameters of the AccèsLogis program in order to increase the amount of eligible costs to carry out the project to $34.5 million. According to the City, the promoter would however have announced that this sum would no longer be sufficient, the costs of the project now being higher than those mentioned above.
Negotiations are bogged down, and there is an impasse. The City then refused to allow the developer to pay the compensation of $6.2 million provided for in the agreement signed with him in 2017, preferring to reduce the height of Tower 6 so as to promote a more harmonious integration of the building and better sunshine on the site, she says.
According to the City, it is in the “public interest” to do so, and it asks the court not to replace elected municipal officials.
“It is believed that there was no will [de la part du promoteur] to move forward with a social housing project,” explains Robert Beaudry. The City has a “good collaboration” with other Montreal developers, including Prével with its Esplanade Cartier project, he says. “Here, that was not the case at all. […] We saw that there was a wall and no desire to set up a project. »
Last June, the promoter Sarto Blouin, of HRM, had however indicated to the To have to that after the impasse in negotiations with the City, he had proposed to build 120 social housing units on another site in the city center, then 200 in Lachine, to replace the project planned in Tower 6, but that the City had refused these options. “The City has never been able to negotiate in good faith,” he said.
In its report, the OCPM also recommended that the City implement an action plan with “vigorous measures” to develop more social housing in the Peter-McGill district. On this subject, Robert Beaudry maintains that the by-law for a mixed metropolis, also known as the “20-20-20 by-law”, as well as the pre-emptive right that the City holds on several lots in Peter-McGill will allow the City to carry out more projects in this downtown area.