They had been given to understand that they would have a primary school for the start of the school year this fall, but parents in Griffintown are still waiting after the first shovelful of earth and are getting impatient. The land has still not been ceded, and a mixed school and community housing project, announced in 2019, has finally been abandoned.
“We are told everywhere that the file is being studied, but we agree [sur le fait] that a transfer of land is not the problem of the century,” says Mathieu Prévost, father of two young children. There is no public elementary school in Griffintown, and families are moving or considering moving when their child is of school age. “We are considering the possibility of leaving the neighborhood,” he admits. But maybe we could stay if we had a date. »
The needs are real in the neighborhood and the Center de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM) is planning a school with 24 classes. “I don’t understand why it takes months to negotiate,” says Étienne Le Nigen, who has been campaigning for the project for a few years. Her daughter goes to De la Petite-Bourgogne primary school, the nearest public school in the Sud-Ouest borough, but which will not have enough long-term places.
The two fathers are part of the collective For a primary school in Griffintown, which has been asking for one for ten years.
Build your angry neighborhood
In November 2019, what was at the time the Montreal School Board (CSDM), the City of Montreal, the Sud-Ouest borough and the social economy enterprise Bâtir son quartier announced in a press release a project “particularly innovative in terms of pooling spaces”.
In search of land for the new school, the CSDM then launched a call for interest. Bâtir son quartier had responded by proposing a mixed construction of a school and community housing on land where the real estate developer was planning a project. The option was chosen, for a school with a dozen classes. What would have been a first in Montreal ultimately did not take place.
“We are disappointed,” says the general director of Building Your Neighborhood, Édith Cyr. We started working together. Then, as time went on, they needed a larger space and said to themselves that it would be simpler to take the whole lot. » Believing that her body was “stunted” after inviting the CSSDM to the site, she retains a bitter taste of the experience. “Let’s just say I’m going to think twice before doing it again,” she confides.
In a desire to facilitate the construction of schools, Quebec gave itself the right a few years ago to force cities to cede land to school service centers (CSS). “The City resisted for a while, because community housing was planned,” says Édith Cyr. No less than 81 housing units were to see the light of day. Impossible for Building Your Neighborhood, she says, to find land elsewhere in Griffintown.
“The CSS have the right to demand it. But when they do that and move community housing, it should be their responsibility to find a way for us to have another place, so that we don’t lose our funding,” she continues.
“The CSS did not steal any ground,” defends Stéphane Chaput, deputy general director of material resources at the CSSDM. He indicates that in addition to the initial project which did not meet all the needs in terms of space, the CSS could not find itself in a co-ownership situation. “For a mixed project, it would take a pilot project,” he said. What emerged from the abandonment of the project is that we are looking at how we can carry out this type of project in the future with all the stakeholders. » A pilot project would allow “to build the plane in mid-flight”, to see “where things are blocked in the legislation” and thus to find solutions.
The Department of Education issued an order in February 2022 to the City of Montreal for land to be ceded, and the City made a proposal. Since then, there have been verifications and discussions that stretch.
Such a process in an area like Griffintown, and for a project “which is a little off the beaten track”, is “an administrative procedure which is long, but normal”, underlines Stéphane Chaput. “It’s easier when we’re not in highly densified areas.” Things should then unravel, he assures. Once the land is owned, the school could open its doors within three to four years.
For its part, the ministry emphasizes that “the density of the sector and the number of land available make the transfer of land more complicated, so that it respects the dimensions necessary for the establishment of a school and a playground. school “. The ministry is also awaiting feedback from the City of Montreal regarding the portion of land planned for the development of the schoolyard.
Agreement to come, says Montreal
“We are hard at work,” assures Robert Beaudry, responsible for town planning on the City’s executive committee. “Many meetings have been held with the CSS to assess various scenarios, so that we are slowly coming to an agreement, he said, assuring that the relationship is good. We are in the last few miles for the land transfer. »
He takes care to insist on the fact that with the new legislation, the cities must cede the land free of charge to the CSS and that the municipalities “have the bill passed on to them” by Quebec. For Montreal, this represents a significant budgetary burden, estimated at $200 million.
The member of Québec solidaire in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne, Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, for his part, has made the construction of an elementary school in Griffintown his priority and has held several meetings on this subject. “People who contact me feel in a no man’s land where we are not able to have a school and connect to make it happen, he said. I ask Minister Drainville to put his political weight behind it to make this happen; we cannot wait another two or three years before the project is made official.