Montreal continues to slip through the fingers of Montrealers, to the benefit of real estate developers who have often never set foot there. A new chapter is opening up to this story of slow dispossession: the project to build a luxury hotel and office space at 1, avenue Van Horne, an emblematic location in Mile End. This announcement shocks many and rightly so: a hotel between the Rosemont overpass and the railway makes as much sense as building an amusement park in the courtyard of the National Assembly.
However, the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough is currently holding a public consultation using a strongly biased survey. Our organizations have tried on several occasions to participate in a reflection on the use of this place with the elected officials to finally receive the message that the choice is not up to the residents of Mile End. We are offered two options put in false opposition: either this “multi-use complex”, as named in the survey, or the fall into ruin of the building, however praised for the solidity of its structure. The amusement park or the apocalypse.
A point often raised by Montrealers shocked by this project is that it is completely disconnected in the context of a housing crisis. The borough’s argument against the creation of social housing in this location refers to a modification to the development plans which prohibits the construction of housing near railway tracks. Only, it is the nature of a hotel to be inhabited, even if its tenants are only passing through. In doing so, what applies to social housing must also apply to temporary luxury housing. So both would make no sense from the rounding argument.
We would be told that 1, avenue Van Horne belongs to Rester inc. and is therefore private property. However, as the borough admits in its survey, this building is “on the edge of the public domain”. This is also why, at the expense of the City and therefore of Montrealers, the entire space surrounding the building would be developed.
As if, as a world premiere, Montrealers would be comfortable making use of so-called public spaces on the roof or in the courtyard of a luxury hotel. As if well-to-do tourists and business people are used to tolerating the presence and noise of a happy neighborhood party, when they want to sleep or work in their new offices. We strongly doubt the real compatibility of community and common spaces with a gentrification project that has no connection with the neighborhood.
other callings
There are however a myriad of vocations which would have a great quality that the current project will never have: to correspond to the needs and aspirations of the residents and residents of Mile End. A cultural center, a creative and manufacturing space, an agricultural greenhouse, a brewery, a place for young people, a social center, etc. There is more than one option that would not be harmful to the neighborhood and its residents. Next to this building, there are workshops occupied by artists whose leases are very precarious, the Champ des Possibles which is an open and natural space co-managed by the citizens, the Van Horne skatepark, parks, a rich urban culture , etc.
A luxury hotel at 1, avenue Van Horne would sign the death warrant of all of the above, no matter what non-binding promises are said with little conviction. Yes, the property at 1 Van Horne Avenue is private, but its location is not. There is a whole ecosystem that would be disrupted, then wiped out, and several residents who would be forced to leave their neighborhood to make way for this project. The borough sides with Rester inc., to the detriment of the very survival of the neighborhood and the possibility of living there, fully or simply.
This fight concerns residents on both sides of the track, the Milendois and Milendoises and the Montrealers who refuse the “Torontoization” of Montreal. What is happening at 1, avenue Van Horne is an illustration of what all neighborhoods in Montreal are going through. We affirm our solidarity with all these struggles which are also ours.
For all these reasons and many more, we oppose the Rester inc. at 1 Van Horne Ave.