This text is taken from Courrier de l’économie. Click here to subscribe.
Can we reconcile the industrial development of the metropolis and the preservation of its biodiversity? In a place as restricted as the Sources nature park, a handful of spaces in a more or less natural state located between Dorval-Trudeau airport, to the south, and the Saint-Laurent industrial park, to the north, the answer is: yes.
The City of Montreal announced at the beginning of June to create a huge green space in the heart of the important industrial zone of the west of the island by multiplying by five the surface area of the Sources nature park. The project notably incorporates the Dorval golf course and some 16 hectares of land that already belonged to the municipal administration and is located in the Technoparc.
Greener than green?
But there remains an important stone in the shoes of this park: a piece of land at its eastern end currently belongs to the technology company Hypertec, which plans to build its future headquarters there. The company must leave its current premises, located a little further north, near Highway 40. It has all the necessary permits for the construction, and it is aware of the ecological challenge that its project represents. It promises “one of the greenest and most sustainable buildings in the world”.
Nothing less. And it’s a little because of the lack of other options that Hypertec makes this commitment.
Eliot Ahdoot, its director of commercialization and innovation, tells the Duty that the Montreal company has made between 10 and 12 offers on other land nearby in recent months. None were accepted. However, it is not the unused concrete spaces that are lacking: the Technoparc has 20 hectares of parking lots which are never, if not rarely fully occupied.
His last resort would therefore be this green space, not far from the Hérons marsh, which the construction of the REM damaged some time ago.
“We want to create a project that improves the environment, goes so far as to assert Eliot Ahdoot. We are thinking of creating green corridors. All cooling will be geothermal, solar will provide backup energy. The rooftop greenhouse will have fruit trees and beehives. We will reuse gray water and we will recover rainwater. We will reduce heat islands…”
Lark !
McGill in the balance
In mid-June, over 200 professors and scientists signed an open letter to Hypertec. His relocation project will involve the cutting of 4,700 trees and the paving of an area where no less than 180 species of birds currently live. Added to this are the grievances of the citizen group Technoparc Oiseaux, which reminds us that the best way to preserve nature is to avoid paving it further.
“We have always said that it is very good to have green buildings, but that the best solution is not to build on a natural environment,” explains spokesperson Katherine Collin. Technoparc Oiseaux recognizes that at least two-thirds of the trees that will be uprooted are already diseased. Hypertec says it wants to reforest its future land more densely and more sustainably.
But that does not satisfy the detractors. “It is always much more effective to conserve than to restore green spaces”, summarizes the professor of the Department of Biology at Concordia University Emma Despland.
Hypertec, of course, wants to move forward with its new headquarters. The longer it takes, the more likely she is to lose customers. But if it decides to settle on the planned site, it could still lose at least one: McGill University.
McGill and over 100 universities launched the Nature Positive Pledge last December. “McGill’s Purchasing Department takes social, economic and environmental aspects into consideration in all of its activities and strives to facilitate the selection of more environmentally friendly goods and services,” explains a spokesperson. In accordance with this commitment, the university could not have as a supplier a company that destroys a precarious natural environment, even if it promises to replace it afterwards.
Quite a puzzle… of which the City of Montreal may have the missing piece. She said last month that she was still in discussion with Hypertec to recover her land. Perhaps the municipal administration can help the company find another land, already exploited, ready to accommodate it?
It may be easier than trying to move 180 species of birds…