Pointe-Claire has drawn the wrath of the real estate giant Cadillac Fairview by announcing the suspension of new residential projects in several of its key sectors. The municipality of the West Island of Montreal wishes to revise its urban plan over two years to take into account the real estate effervescence brought by the upcoming arrival of the Metropolitan Express Network (REM).
“We have to consider all our options,” dropped Wednesday at the Duty the senior vice-president of development of Cadillac Fairview, Brian Salpeter, who does not rule out a possible legal action against the municipality.
The company claims to have submitted to the City last summer the details of a real estate project that it wishes to carry out on part of the parking lot of the imposing shopping center that it has owned for decades near the Trans-Canada Highway, in a few steps from a future REM station. The project provides for the development of a green public square, but also a residence for seniors with 435 apartments and two high-rise buildings with 445 rental apartments in addition to a multi-storey parking lot.
Elected officials, however, adopted last Tuesday, at a municipal council meeting, an interim control resolution which puts on hold for 90 days the granting of construction permits for new buildings and zoning changes on existing ones in order to freeze any new project. residential in several key sectors of the linked city, including its downtown area. This measure could be extended over a period of two years at the end of the adoption scheduled for May 3 of an interim control regulation. The objective would be to give the municipality time to carry out public consultations in order to update its urban plan by 2024.
“We have built enough. Let’s take a moment to pause, breathe and reassess the situation. We only have one chance to design the municipality well,” said city councilor Eric Stork, who is particularly concerned about the increase in traffic congestion in Pointe-Claire, where public transit is limited. . “People are worried about the densification, which goes too far”, also indicates Barry Christensen. The resident also notes the lack of social and affordable housing in this municipality, where property values are rising sharply.
“Construction cannot be unlimited,” declared the mayor of Pointe-Claire, Tim Thomas, who believes that the decision taken by his administration responds to the “concerns” of the population he represents.
The anger of promoters
For Cadillac Fairview, the implications are great. This political decision comes “to compromise the feasibility” of the real estate project of the company, which “must go ahead”, can we read in a letter intended for the elected officials of Pointe-Claire and dated February 7 that The duty was able to consult. In the written document, Cadillac Fairview is careful to mention that its municipal tax expenditures represent “nearly 15% of the City’s annual budget”, which makes it “the largest municipal taxpayer” in Pointe-Claire. The organization sent another letter to the elected officials, on February 11, to try to organize a meeting with them on this subject.
“The gesture of the City jeopardizes this wonderful project and ensures that the parking lot remains a heat island”, complained again Wednesday Mr. Salpeter in an interview.
Several other promoters are suffering from this effect of the freeze in real estate construction, which affects several sectors of Pointe-Claire. The Kubik company, for example, had a list of around 100 people ready to buy one of the approximately 500 housing units it intended to build in several phases on land located near Saint-Jean Boulevard, in the municipality of approximately 31,300 inhabitants. “Finally, we can’t do anything as long as there is a moratorium on construction in Pointe-Claire,” sighs the project’s sales manager, Mike Colacone. “There are plenty of real estate developers in Pointe-Claire who are in our situation,” he adds.
“We are really encouraged by the regulations adopted last week,” said the spokesperson for the group Sauvons la forêt Fairview, Geneviève Lussier, who is delighted to see that the large green space located near the shopping center of Cadillac Fairview is one of the areas protected by the Interim Control Resolution. The company, which owns this forest, refuses for the moment to detail the real estate project that it would eventually like to carry out there.
“We are still worried” about the future of this green space, confides the mayor, Tim Thomas.