Nearly five years after the purchase by the City of Montreal of the former bus station, located in the southern portion of the Voyageur block, the administration of Valérie Plante has still not made known its intentions with regard to the real estate development on the site. The opposition considers these delays unacceptable given the housing needs in the city and the need to revitalize this sector.
In 2013, following the financial fiasco of the Voyageur island, a project piloted by UQAM, the Aquilini Group acquired the northern part of the site which now includes housing as well as the new bus station. . In 2018, it was the turn of the City of Montreal to buy the building located south of the quadrilateral at a cost of $18 million.
In 2020, the City indicated that it planned to install a municipal administrative center and social and affordable housing there. However, the pandemic and teleworking have led the City to review its project, particularly with regard to the proportion of office space. But since then, no announcement has yet been made by the City.
Delays
Two organizations, the Colibri delivery service and Les Valoristes, are temporarily occupying part of the building, but the opposition at City Hall believes that the Plante administration is unduly delaying the completion of the project. “We have a building that has been abandoned for several years and which the City owns. She has all the capacity to implement a project to come and energize the sector and she does not do it, ”deplores the adviser to Ensemble Montréal and official opposition spokesperson for economic development, Julien Hénault-Ratelle. .
Montreal has also extended the agreements with the two occupying organizations until the end of 2024, which suggests new deadlines for the realization of a project. After the 2018 transaction, the Plante administration hinted that work could begin before the end of his first term, which was not the case, recalls Mr. Hénault-Ratelle. Then, last December, the head of housing on the executive committee, Benoit Dorais, mentioned an imminent announcement, “in the near future”. “I think that citizens expect better than eight years to develop a site like the one in the southern part of Îlot Voyageur,” said the elected representative of Ensemble Montréal.
Studies
Two pre-feasibility studies had been carried out by the firm Daoust Lestage, one in 2019 and the other in 2020, at the request of the City. The duty was able to consult the documents obtained by Ensemble Montréal under the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies.
The first study submitted in December 2019 proposed the construction of 327 housing units, including 175 through the Accès Condos and Accès Condos + programs of the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM) and 62 social housing units with the AccèsLogis program.
In the second study, dated May 2020, it was rather a question of a total of 279 housing units, including 62 condos, 90 social housing units and 127 rental units.
Julien Hénault-Ratelle is worried about the absence of student accommodation in the plans, although in 2022 Benoit Dorais had this possibility. “When you think of this nerve center site in the center of a student district, a stone’s throw from UQAM, […] and that we don’t plan any, that, for me, is a major issue,” he says.
The work unit for the establishment of student housing (UTILE) agrees that this site would be ideal for student housing. “Considering that the Plante administration made a commitment during the election campaign to promote the construction of 2,000 new affordable student housing units during this mandate, we believe that it would be logical that at least part of this land be intended for housing. affordable student,” says Maxime Pelletier, Assistant Director of Government Affairs at UTILE. “The increased presence of students in this neighborhood could, in our opinion, greatly contribute to the revitalization of this sector. »
Ensemble Montréal also judges that the number of housing units proposed by Daoust Lestage is insufficient and that by reducing the spaces intended for offices, it would be possible to provide 600. “We are in the midst of a housing crisis throughout the city of Montreal. […] The context has changed considerably since the pandemic and the needs from the point of view of a work office in the city center have greatly diminished,” underlines Mr. Hénault-Ratelle.
Coordinator of the Ville-Marie housing committee, Éric Michaud, for his part, fears that the social housing planned for the Voyageur block will never see the light of day, especially since Quebec has abandoned the AccèsLogis program. “If we are not able to have inclusion of social housing on private land, public land should at least be reserved for social housing,” he believes.
In an analysis carried out last year, the Ville-Marie Housing Committee observed that social housing represented on average only 0.9% of residential construction starts in this central borough between 2017 and 2021.
A “signature project”
The Plante administration did not want to give an interview about the future of Voyageur Island. In a statement sent to the Dutythe office of the mayor indicates that the City wanted to take the time to reassess the needs in a post-pandemic context and that it is working on a “signature project”.
“We are currently deploying an accelerated mandate with teams of specialists studying different scenarios. What we want is a mixed project, a real complete living environment. This year, we will present a tangible proposal that meets the ambitions and needs of the sector.