At the corner of Van Horne Avenue, the Rosemont Viaduct and the Canadian Pacific (CP) railway line is an emblematic industrial building built in 1924-1925, still equipped with its “water tower”. This beacon in the city is one of the last witnesses of a very prosperous economic area in the heart of Montreal. This is what has brought thousands of workers to settle all around and create lively and mobilized communities.
The warehouse at 1, avenue Van Horne was part of an industrial complex which included the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Bellechasse and the Catelli pasta factory, the famous 305, rue de Bellechasse which has unfortunately been emptied. of its artists despite the efforts of many to keep them in their studios. Now gone, there was also the Frontenac brewery plant, where the new innovative and daring bus garage of the STM is being built today, which recently made headlines for its cost overruns.
This sector with a glorious past has been under reconstruction for years. Soon, the old STM garage at the corner of Saint-Denis and Bellechasse streets will give way to a whole new sector, where parks, public buildings, businesses and homes will emerge. This is an exceptional opportunity to create a new neighborhood on a human scale, where social diversity will be promoted in order to meet the needs of the community.
Which brings me back to 1 Van Horne Avenue. Why this detour? To fully understand the context of the renovation project of the heritage building in which the promoter Rester plans to build a luxury hotel. If you haven’t seen it pass, a petition is currently circulating against this project on social networks. People are outraged that this building at the north end of Mile End is not being converted into social and community housing.
In a context of housing crisis as acute as ours, it was to be expected that this highly mobilized community would react vigorously to such a project. This is undoubtedly why the borough made a gesture of transparency by launching an online consultation to hear what the community had to say about the private project.
Moreover, last week, appeared in these same pages a letter from a representative of the group Mile End Ensemble. Although I understand the distress of the author of the text and more broadly of the community she represents, the reasons given by the borough to justify the impossibility of developing housing are correct.
In this regard, the borough councilor for the district, Marie Sterlin, is a committed and long-standing activist recognized for the cause of social and community housing in Montreal. It would be absolutely amazing if she suddenly became one of the spokespersons for real estate speculation on the island. So why do people who have been involved for years in the defense of social justice now find themselves having to submit such a project for the approval of the borough council?
For several obvious reasons. The Plateau cannot impose social housing in a non-residential project. Moreover, it cannot impose a particular type of project on a private owner. It should be added that, in this very specific case, the development plan of the metropolitan community of Montreal prevents the construction of apartments by right near a railway line. Besides, that’s probably why the developer has submitted a hotel project and not apartments. If this had been possible and the promoter had submitted such a project, the borough would have had the power to impose the rules of Montreal’s social and affordable housing policy.
This brings up another issue: that of government funding. If the owner sells the building and the community or even a private group proposes to develop a social and affordable housing project there, what would happen? It would happen that the too high costs of construction of housing in a heritage and industrial building would probably disqualify the project from current subsidy programs.
What then remains for the Mile End community to hope to see the birth under the water tower of a project that will meet its aspirations? Few things. This cul-de-sac demonstrates how complex the preservation of our heritage buildings is. It also illustrates how helpless cities are in the face of such issues. Apart from the only regulatory powers they have, they have neither the means to buy these buildings nor to subsidize community projects in this type of construction.
I dare to hope that all parties concerned will find common ground. It would be heartbreaking to end up back at square one. The status quo would add another symbolic heritage building to the long list of buildings at risk of deterioration in Montreal. It also reminds us how crucial it is to review the law governing the protection of heritage buildings. For the moment, without the grace of a private project, these places systematically risk disappearing.