Nearly 20,000 housing units, half of which will have affordable rents, connected to the metro by a tramway and arranged around a large park, will be built on the land of the former Montreal Hippodrome from 2027.
At least this is the vision of the City of Montreal, which unveils its master plan on Friday for a carbon-neutral district in the Namur-Hippodrome sector, the land for which was transferred to it seven years ago.
On the 43-hectare site, sports, community and cultural facilities, local services, employment zones, schools, a sports center, a library, a health center, 14 hectares of new parks and public squares, the equivalent of 20 soccer fields, and a massive planting of trees and plants, as well as ecological water management.
“By being owners and developers of this land, we are seizing this opportunity of the century to make this new district a showcase of Montreal’s ambitions, particularly in terms of innovation, inclusion and citizen participation,” declared, in a press release, the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante.
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTRÉAL
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTRÉAL
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTRÉAL
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTRÉAL
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTRÉAL
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IMAGE PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF MONTRÉAL
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The future tramway would run along the axis of Rue Jean-Talon and could extend to Boulevard Cavendish, indicates the master plan.
Last year, municipal officials were talking about the construction of 12,500 housing units on the site.
In May 2023, the community organization La Traversée won a first call for tenders for the construction of a building of 200 to 250 social housing units. But another call for tenders, from the private sector, did not attract any bids.
According to information from The Press, the real estate developers did not want to formulate a firm proposal without knowing what the neighborhood in which they would be located would look like. The City requested 60% affordable condos over a period of at least 30 years.
The land of the old racecourse is currently fallow. The City will have to install municipal infrastructure there, such as the aqueduct, sewers, streets and other developments. In an interview on Radio-Canada’s Première Chaîne, the head of urban planning on the executive committee, Robert Beaudry, estimated that these infrastructures will cost at least 1.4 billion.
With Philippe Teisceira-Lessard, The Press