Housing | Finished construction for Trigone

The construction for Habitations Trigone is over. The group became a property developer and henceforth entrusted its work to “several licensed general contractors”, including the son of one of the owners.

Hugo Joncas
The Press

“I’m putting an end to my career as a builder,” said Patrice St-Pierre, one of the two businessmen behind Trigone, in an interview with The Press.

However, he has no intention of retiring from real estate. “I have the right to own the buildings,” he says. I just don’t have the right to build. We chose four groups and transferred the sites to them. »

Last September, the Régie du bâtiment du Québec canceled the 19 licenses of companies operating under the umbrella of Trigone. The industry watchdog accused him of having “circumvented the law” through various schemes: unpaid judgment debts, false declarations, lack of collaboration with the authorities, bad service and poor quality…

After a challenge on appeal, the Administrative Labor Tribunal has just confirmed the decision in the middle of the construction holiday, on July 29. Result: any site under the control of Patrice St-Pierre and his partner Serge Rouillard must close.

Active sites under the control of the son

In Terrebonne and Mascouche, workers were nevertheless at work on the construction sites of the Lokalia and Axcès Trigone/Viva-Cité projects, The Press. They are under the responsibility of a numbered company belonging to St-Pierre’s son, Mathieu St-Pierre. Impossible to reach him: on the site of the Régie, the file of his company presents a telephone number which is not his.

When passing from The Press at the Axcès Trigone project in Mascouche on Wednesday, a worker was busy removing the Trigone logo from an advertising sign.

Patrice St-Pierre says his son is responsible for these sites temporarily as a subcontractor, pending the appointment of another general contractor. He must announce the identity of the company that will take over by the end of the week, after notifying the Régie.

St-Pierre ensures that they are not related to his family or that of his associate Rouillard.

According to him, his relationship with the general contractors he chooses fully respects the spirit of the court’s decision, which excludes him from the construction industry. “These are contracts with licensed general contractors,” he says. I am not a client, I am a customer! »

A priori, nothing indicates that St-Pierre breaks the rules, according to the Régie.

In Mascouche, Trigone’s projects are located on land that the group had acquired in partnership with the Fonds de solidarité FTQ. The spokesperson for this organization, Patrick McQuilken, explains that another contractor must come to take over from Mathieu St-Pierre: Construction Dinamo inc., of L’Ancienne-Lorette.

“We had other projects with them, and it went really well,” said the Fund’s spokesperson.

In addition, Trigone had already withdrawn from the construction of condominiums, which earned him his problems with the Régie. The group only built rental buildings.

Real estate developer

Even if he says he wants to retire from construction, St-Pierre assures us that he intends to “continue to do what we have been doing for 30 years”: real estate projects.

He affirms that “private and public” investors must join them to invest in their projects, without wanting to specify which ones.

He also refuses to identify the general contractors who must take over to build them, in addition to Dinamo and his son.

Last October, just after the cancellation of its licenses, the Fonds FTQ sold its share of the 30 rental properties it held with Trigone. The buyer, Toronto’s Centurion Apartment REIT, paid “more than $300 million” for its share of the portfolio, which has a total value of nearly $1 billion.

The apartment buildings on Avenue de la Gare in Mascouche, which were not finished, were not part of the transaction.

In addition to these two projects, the Fund still owns land in Montérégie with companies linked to Trigone.