The senior municipal official who was supposed to serve as a bridge between the Plante administration and the business community has just left his position, barely a year and a half after his hiring.
Philippe Krivicky had the red carpet rolled out at city hall in the fall of 2022, with a new position of deputy general director tailor-made for him. He was until then president of the real estate development and construction division at the developer COGIR and studied business administration at the University of Sherbrooke.
His arrival in the City was unusual: few business people join public administrations mid-career.
It is “with emotion that I leave my team at the City of Montreal,” Mr. Krivicky wrote on the social network LinkedIn last week. It is “the beginning of a new chapter in my professional journey after spending more than a year building the solid foundations necessary for the development of the metropolis,” he added.
Mr. Krivicky had been put in charge of economic development and real estate strategy in Montreal. Her arrival was highlighted by a press release in which Mayor Plante highlighted “her expertise and knowledge of the environment”.
“My role within the municipal administration will be that of pivot, point of contact to activate connections between the business world and the municipal world. I believe we can build bridges,” Philippe Krivicky explained to La Presse at the same time. His arrival represented “a desire for rapprochement” with the business community, he continued.
On Monday, he did not immediately respond to an interview request from The Press.
On LinkedIn, the Director General of the City of Montreal, Serge Lamontagne, praised his work on “several flagship projects and initiatives”.
Valérie Plante’s office sent her its thanks. “It reinforced the clear signal that our administration is there to continue to collaborate with the market and quickly achieve the results expected of the population,” said press secretary Catherine Cadotte, in writing.
But for the official opposition at city hall, this departure is the symptom of a real problem. “In the midst of a housing crisis and economic recovery in the city center of the metropolis, it is worrying to see that the official hired by the Plante administration to repair the broken housing situation is leaving the ship,” reacted the head of the city. ‘Together Montreal, Aref Salem. “This departure leads us to believe that the actions undertaken by Projet Montréal to get closer to stakeholders in the housing sector have so far been a failure. »