At the four corners of the city of Montreal, barricaded buildings make the urban landscape ugly. In the coming months, the metropolis intends to tighten its regulations to force owners to better protect their buildings, but its ability to intervene is limited when it comes to bringing an abandoned private property back to life.
In 2014, the Redpath house had fallen under the peak of demolishers. This destruction closed the saga that had lasted for decades. Built in 1886, the Redpath House was one of the few houses of Queen Anne architecture still present in the metropolis. Partially destroyed in 1986 and subsequently abandoned, the Redpath house escaped demolition in February 2011. In 2014, Quebec finally ruled that the Redpath house was not of national heritage interest and that its state of advanced decrepitude justified its demolition.
The Redpath House has become a symbol of the inability of the authorities, both municipal and provincial, to protect its heritage buildings, but also to force the owners to take serious measures to restore their buildings, especially those of heritage. Nearly ten years after the demolition of the Redpath House, the land is still vacant.
Urban wounds
The metropolis has several large institutional or religious complexes that have been looking for a new vocation for years. This is the case of the Institute for the deaf and dumb on rue Saint-Denis, the Hôpital de la Miséricorde, the Hôtel-Dieu and the Saint-Sulpice library, which is still empty after years of procrastination that a Maison de la chanson project is planned there.
But everywhere in town, there are barricaded buildings, of lesser heritage value of course, but whose future seems uncertain. In 2016, the City commissioned the Entremise organization to take stock of vacant buildings in Montreal. He had counted 900 of them, of which 121 were deemed to be of heritage interest.
But these buildings, qualified as “urban warts”, are not all abandoned, and some could benefit from a new vocation in the years to come.
Rue de Rouen, at the corner of rue Montgomery, a boarded up building does not look like much. Things could change since it belongs since last year to the Old Brewery Mission, which plans to replace the current building with a building with 12 small apartments for single women. The organization has obtained the necessary permits from the borough, and work should begin in the spring for an opening in the spring of 2024, says Marie-Pier Therrien, communications officer at the Old Brewery Mission. The organization that works with homeless people inaugurated another women’s home on Friday on De Maisonneuve Boulevard.
Located at 1304-1330, rue Saint-Antoine, at the corner of rue de la Montagne, a red brick building built in 1938 seems abandoned. Visited by squatters, this building has been burned down twice in three years. But who owns this building? After verification, it is a building that the City of Montreal acquired in 2017 in order to build 150 social housing units.
The City still intends to carry out this social housing project, underlines Camille Bégin, public relations officer at the City of Montreal. “Since the acquisition, steps have been taken with community partners, but the underfunding of new projects in AccèsLogis has not made it possible to materialize a project,” she said in an email.
After the June 2022 fire, the City carried out work to secure and clean up the site, and these have just been completed. “The City of Montreal aims to sell the buildings to an NPO for the development of social and affordable housing by 2024,” adds Ms.me Begin.
In Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, an elegant triplex built in 1932 and located at the corner of boulevard Pie-IX and avenue Pierre-De Coubertin offers a very sad view, with its boarded up windows and its facade smeared with graffiti. The scene of a fire in February 2018, the building was heavily damaged. Poorly protected from the weather, it continued to deteriorate thereafter.
François Bolduc, vice-president of the Narbo group, explains that his company had noticed the abandoned building and contacted its owner. They have reached an agreement for Narbo to rebuild the building, which will go from 3 large units to 22 rental units thanks to a rear extension and the addition of a floor. “The owner was not someone who is in real estate and he did not know what to do with it,” explains Mr. Bolduc. “The building will be demolished largely because it cannot be salvaged. But the architectural elements will be preserved, including the stone insertions and the wrought iron balconies. »
Thus, the facades will be rebuilt identically, respecting the original architecture. But given the cost of the project, the accommodation cannot be rented at a low price. “On the other hand, there will be 10% of housing that will be considered affordable,” maintains Mr. Bolduc. Work is expected to begin in March and be completed in 2024.
Review the regulations
In interview at Duty, the head of urban planning on the executive committee, Robert Beaudry, recognizes that the file of vacant buildings is complex. “We have an aging building stock in Montreal. Ourselves, we have very aging buildings, which must be secured,” he says.
Recently, the City unveiled a strategy to rehabilitate 68 vacant buildings belonging to it, fifty of which are of heritage interest. But in the wake of Bill 69 amending the Cultural Heritage Act, which requires municipalities to make an inventory of their heritage buildings, Montreal intends to review its building maintenance regulations. “We want to be more demanding to avoid the deterioration of buildings and to ensure that they are protected from bad weather”, explains the elected official. This draft regulation should be announced in the spring.
However, the City cannot force a private owner to carry out a project in a vacant building. “But we accompany them,” says Mr. Beaudry.
The Ville-Marie borough has also adopted a by-law facilitating the temporary occupation of vacant private buildings by startup and the use of vacant land for one-off events.
But “urban warts” are not for everyone, points out Dinu Bumbaru, policy director at Héritage Montréal. He cites the small service station located at 55, rue Saint-Viateur Ouest. Built in 1939, it is now abandoned. However, citizens have taken the initiative to register it on Memento, a platform that lists endangered heritage. “Some buildings are not naturally identified with heritage, but the affection that people have for certain places reminds us that there is also a dimension of attachment”, underlines Mr. Bumbaru, while deploring the lack of support which prevents the transient use of such places.