An industrial project involving the cutting of 57 trees in a highly mineralized area of eastern Montreal has raised opposition from several residents who fear the impacts of this future development on the environment and their quality of life.
The Canadian company Summit, which owns more than 150 industrial buildings in the country, has filed a request to demolish the one-story building located at 7101 Notre-Dame Street East, which it has owned since 2018.
Over the decades, this building first served as a research center specializing in feminine hygiene products for Johnson & Johnson, where hundreds of people were employed, before being acquired in 2013 by Energizer. However, this building has been vacant for at least a year.
The Borough’s Demolition Committee, which has the mandate to study and approve requests for the demolition of buildings in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, will examine this project on Tuesday. The precise vocation of the industrial development of the project will then be presented to the members of this committee by the promoter, indicates to the To have to Maisonneuve–Longue-Pointe District Councilor Alia Hassan-Cournol, who sits on this committee.
However, the project has already received a favorable opinion from the Department of Urban Development and Business Services, mentions a document from the borough which details certain aspects of this project. He specifies that the Summit company plans to demolish the three current buildings on the site, built in the early 1950s and considered dilapidated in many respects, to replace them with a one-storey industrial building which will include a green roof. on part of its surface.
More trucks, fewer trees
Since the buildings currently on this lot have little heritage value, borough officials do not see any objection to their demolition. However, this industrial project involves the cutting of 57 trees of different species, including oaks, ashes, American elms and silver maples.
These mature trees will be replaced by young trees that will be planted on this land, assures the promoter. However, these will not have the same ecological value as the trees which are threatened with being razed by the expansion of the mineralized zone on this site, which will accommodate many trucks, deplores Anaïs Houde, a resident of the sector mobilized in for the protection of green spaces.
” It does not make sense ! says Ms. Houde, who opposes “this kind of project which contributes to destroying the canopy and increasing trucking on Notre-Dame Street, which is already saturated”.
Citizen opposition
Ms. Houde is one of the fifteen citizens who have sent an unfavorable opinion to this project in the last few days in anticipation of the meeting of the Borough’s Demolition Committee on Tuesday.
“For citizens, it’s a constant struggle to keep the trees we have,” says Isabelle Durand, who lives near this industrial site. In addition to fearing that this project will further reduce the number of trees in this area, the resident fears an increase in “noise nuisance” that this industrial project could cause.
“It’s not a green roof that will replace mature trees,” adds Mireille Goulet, another resident of the neighborhood in opposition to this development. “Vegetation is very important. Trees are essential. The little we have, we must keep them, ”she insists.
Borough councilor Alia Hassan-Cournol wants to be reassuring. “What you have to understand is that we are in the very beginning of a process of demolishing a building,” she underlines. Now that the civil servants have analyzed the validity of the project from a strictly regulatory point of view, the elected officials of the borough must take into account the concerns of the citizens which will be submitted to them, explains Ms. Hassan-Cournol. “We will then judge whether or not we will grant the demolition. »
Heat islands
The Assumption Sud-Longue-Pointe sector, which was the subject of a report by the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM) published in 2019, is considered by several public health experts to be the “lung noir” from Montreal. This sector notably includes the Grande Prairie Industrial Ecopark, where warehouses and parking lots create large heat islands that leave little room for green spaces.
The OCPM report on the development of this sector had also underlined the importance of increasing the greening of this sector, in particular by “planting mature trees to counter heat islands” in public areas and industrial land.
It is also in the west of the Assomption Sud–Longue-Pointe sector that Ray-Mont Logistiques plans to build an intermodal platform that can store up to 10,000 shipping containers. This project, which raises strong popular opposition, also received government authorization on Friday.
In this context, the borough, which has tried in vain in recent years to prevent the Ray-Mont Logistiques project, ensures that new industrial projects in this sector are closely monitored to limit their environmental impacts. “We can put fairly strict criteria on the project, we can ask for an improved project,” notes Ms. Hassan-Cournol, about the development projected by Summit on Notre-Dame Street.
“We are not preventing companies from coming to develop a sector, but not just anyhow, at any price, and not to the detriment of the environment. It must be very clear for the companies that are developing in Assomption Sud,” insists the elected representative of Projet Montréal. She also notes that the concerns of citizens regarding the potential felling of mature trees on this land, “this is a very important point” which will be “taken into account” by the borough in its analysis of this request for demolition. “It is clear that we will do everything to protect mature trees. »