The arrival of Northvolt is a gift from heaven for promoter Luc Poirier and his partners. They have just sold the land where the Swedish company will be established.
A juicy profit awaits them. The sellers get 240 million for a property they paid 20 million for 8 years ago.
On his Facebook page Luc Poirier mentions that this is the largest land transaction in the history of Quebec.
On October 23, the Swedish company Northvolt became the owner of the immense industrial land of 18.5 million square feet to accommodate an integrated electric vehicle battery cell factory, indicate the deeds of sale filed with the land register.
The foreign company is paying 240 million for the land, entirely financed by a repayable loan from the Quebec government, the office of Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon confirms by email.
The sellers are Quartier MC2, owned by Gestionimmobilier GAP, whose shareholders are companies owned by Alice Minying Wu, Serge Gariépy and Luc Poirier.
A statement released by the sellers announced the completion of the transaction Wednesday morning. It was impossible to speak with Luc Poirier.
Since 2015, the partners have essentially paid the property taxes on the land and some studies, Luc Poirier told us at the time. He held a third of the land, the same proportion as Mr. Gariépy and M.me Wu.
MC2 had the ambition to build a residential district of 5,000 housing units. But many constraints prevented him from moving forward with his project, he explained to us at the time.
IMAGE TAKEN FROM THE SITE POIRIER.COM
The subdivision of 5,000 homes designed by Quartier MC2 on land now belonging to Northvolt.
First, the land had been decontaminated in the past by Akzo Nobel Coatings for industrial use, not residential use. Millions in decontamination were required to make it compatible with residential occupancy. Secondly, the Ministry of Transport was opposed to the residential subdivision because of the traffic on Route 116 that would have been caused by the daily travel of some 5,000 households. Third, the power supply to the huge site was problematic.
In short, Mr. Poirier and his partners obtained approximately ten times their investment for land for which development seemed complicated to say the least in the short term.
At the time, the businessman said his land was worth at least 400 million because of the residential development he was planning. “When I buy land, it’s for the long term. There was no land. With land, you never lose in the long term,” he confided then.
At the price of 240 million paid by Northvolt with taxpayers’ money, the transaction amounts to $12-13 per square foot.
According to broker Pierre-Éric Poitras, senior associate at NAI Terramont Commercial, well aware of market dynamics on the South Shore, industrial land ready to build with an area of 2 million square feet can sell for 28 $ per square foot.
Mr. Poirier is not making his first splash in real estate. In Candiac, the purchase of an abandoned factory with a deposit of 2.5 million brought him 27.7 million, before interest and tax, in two years.
With the collaboration of Julien Arsenault and Hugo Joncas, The Press