Although Mount Royal has been protected since 2005 under a decree which granted it the status of a heritage site, it is not safe from threats. Real estate development in the city center is gradually making it disappear behind ever taller towers. The most recent project in the running is the addition of 13 floors to the Place Montréal Trust building, on McGill College Avenue, which risks further reducing one of the visual openings towards the mountain, fears the organization Les Amis de the mountain, which has made protecting views of Mount Royal one of its priorities. Its new director, Christian Sénéchal, who takes office on Monday, intends to continue this battle. The duty the encounter.
Ivanhoé Cambridge is proposing to add 13 floors to the Place Montréal Trust building to increase it to 16 floors and accommodate office spaces, hotel rooms and housing. The building is adjacent to the future Réseau express métropolitain (REM) station and the pedestrian zone planned by the City. The project deviates from the permitted height, but the Urban Planning Advisory Committee has already given its approval to the proposal and, in December, the elected officials of the Ville-Marie district approved a modification to the urban planning regulations in connection with This folder.
Although the project has other steps to take before seeing the light of day, the Friends of the Mountain organization is in dire straits. “We understand that Montreal is a growing city and that there must be construction, but I don’t understand why we don’t keep this concern in mind in all projects. We cannot imagine that in Paris, they would not ask themselves the question if a building threatened to obstruct the view of the Sacré-Coeur basilica or the Eiffel Tower,” argues Christian Sénéchal, met at his new offices in the Smith house.
In their brief submitted last month, Friends of the Mountain notably recommended ensuring that the entire view towards Mount Royal from the Place Ville-Marie esplanade is preserved.
This is not the first time the organization has sounded the alarm about the progressive obstruction of mountain views. In 2021, the Hudson’s Bay Company had to scale back the expansion project of its famous La Baie store following the report from the Office de consultation publique de Montréal and criticism from organizations like Les Mountain friends.
“Every time the City authorizes an exemption, it weakens the regulations,” believes Hélène Panaïoti, outgoing general director of Friends of the Mountain. “The views from the mountain have been documented since the 1930s and they are stunning. We hardly see the river anymore, even though, as it is written in the Mount Royal Protection and Development Plan, the link between the mountain and the river has always been historically important. »
The Smith house under construction
1500, avenue McGill College is therefore one of the files that Christian Sénéchal will have to monitor. Former director of the National Dance Therapy Center of the Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal from 2011 to 2019 and until very recently general director of the organization Les Arts et la Ville, Christian Sénéchal will now direct the destiny of Friends of the Mountain, founded in 1986. If the organization is known for its role as watchdog for the protection of Mount Royal, it also assumes important responsibilities in offering services on the mountain: awareness activities, snowshoe and ski rental and catering services.
But barely installed in his chair as general manager, Christian Sénéchal will have to deal with a major problem. Starting in the fall, the organization that occupies the Smith house will have to be temporarily relocated for a period of a year and a half to allow the completion of various work related to the plumbing system and the French drain of the heritage building. . The organization doesn’t know where it will go.
The question concerns Christian Sénéchal, because the organization’s reception capacity is closely linked to its financial resilience. “Are we going to be able to offer the same type of services? There are groups who come, but we are already saturated compared to the reception capacity at the Smith house,” says Mr. Sénéchal, who hopes that one day, the organization will be able to benefit from a new pavilion. reception of greater capacity.
Camillien-Houde Way
Subsequently, in 2025 and 2026, the City will undertake to reduce the number of parking spaces, with the removal of 290 of the 725 parking spaces in Mount Royal Park. In the longer term, by 2029, the Camillien-Houde route will undergo a major metamorphosis, since it will be closed to cars. While Les Amis de la montagne welcomes this project, the organization still wonders how the City of Montreal will be able to effectively ensure access to Mount Royal by public transportation. Will buses have to go around the mountain to access Mount Royal Park via Remembrance Road? “The only thing that is clear is that they are going to remove public transit from the east of the city. It’s difficult to agree with that, because that represents more than half of the population of Montreal. Not everyone is able to climb Mount Royal on foot,” says Hélène Panaïoti. “If it takes, on the round trip, 40 to 60 minutes more […], it’s really a loss of accessibility. »
To these challenges are added in particular for Christian Sénéchal the implementation of the Conservation Plan for the ecological network of Mount Royal, developed in parallel with that of the Montérégie hills, as well as the continuation of consultation work with the institutions present on the mountain, with an eye on the Urban Planning and Mobility Plan, which should be unveiled by the City in the coming months.