Town planning | What densification for L’Île-des-Sœurs?

With the entry into service of the REM de l’Ouest in the spring, the area around the stations will become denser. This is what is planned next to the L’Île-des-Sœurs station: a new neighborhood will have more than 1,360 housing units within five years, in addition to a 16-storey hotel. But citizens fear that the island will become overcrowded and that the infrastructure will be insufficient for all these new inhabitants. How to reconcile density and quality of life?

Isabelle Ducas

The Press

A new neighborhood six minutes from the city center

Near the REM station under construction in L’Île-des-Sœurs, an office building is being transformed into 142 apartments, while cranes are busy on a construction site for 276 condos on the other side from the street. Soon, several new towers will rise from the ground in the Cité de l’Île project, which will eventually accommodate thousands of people on a site of nearly two million square feet, or 26 football fields.

With the fast train, L’Île-des-Sœurs will be six minutes from Central Station and downtown Montreal. The bet of the promoters of the real estate project: several future residents of this neighborhood will not have a car. They will take the REM to get to town, cycle or walk around the island and use car sharing for their other outings.

Moreover, only 65% ​​of future housing will have an underground parking space (and street parking will be impossible). However, indoor bicycle parking is planned for each residential unit, in addition to a maintenance space for bicycles, 40 car-sharing cars and 120 charging stations for electric vehicles.

Several similar projects, of the TOD type (Transit-Oriented Development), focused on public and active transportation, will see the light of day along the REM route.

Promoter Claude Lachance, head of Lachance Immobilier, is convinced that the Cité de l’Île project, which he is developing in partnership with the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ, is the way of the future.

“The clientele we will have here will not be the same as in the rest of L’Île-des-Sœurs, it will be a TOD clientele,” he says. When the REM is in operation, it will change the whole dynamic. Young people no longer want to go downtown by car. »

“Hybrid work is a game-changer,” adds Martin Raymond, Senior Vice-President, Real Estate Investments, Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ.

car culture

But residents of L’Île-des-Sœurs are not of this opinion. They fear that this influx of new residents will harm their quality of life, in particular by increasing car traffic.

“We understand that this sector needs to be densified, but with the other planned projects and the land that remains to be developed, the impact on the population will be enormous,” said Daniel Manseau, president of the Association of owners and residents of Nuns’ Island (APRIDS).

According to him, promoters are mistaken in thinking that people without cars will settle in L’Île-des-Sœurs.

“They want to make a neighborhood that looks like Griffintown, with buildings built very close to the edge of the street,” adds Marc Nawar, who lives nearby. “But we’re not in Griffintown. Our urban plan speaks of a “garden city” and not of a city-centre type district. »

The two men also point out that the schools of L’Île-des-Sœurs are overflowing. In fact, since 2019, classes from the Marguerite primary school have occupied two floors of the office building at 14, place du Commerce, which belongs to Lachance Immobilier and will be located in the heart of Cité de l’Île.

Few social housing

On the side of the Citizens’ Action Committee of Verdun (CACV), we deplore the fact that the social housing provided for in Cité de l’Île is largely insufficient.

Based on the area that the project plans to reserve for social housing (100,000 sq.²), the CACV calculated that there would be 109 units, which would represent 6.2% of all residential spaces, while the regulations for a mixed metropolis of the City of Montreal provide that it would take approximately 20% social housing (in addition to 20% affordable housing and 20% family housing).

“For the CACV and for low-income tenants, this is far too little, especially since L’Île-des-Sœurs does not currently have any social housing, and despite appearances, hundreds of tenant households on the island pay more than half of their income for housing,” says Nicolas Lavaine, coordinator of the organization.

To compensate for the insufficient number of social housing units, the property developer will have to pay a financial contribution to the City, which is permitted by the by-law.

APRIDS and CACV are inviting concerned citizens to take part in a consultation meeting organized by the borough of Verdun on January 24. As the real estate project derogates from zoning regulations, it is the subject of a special project for the construction, modification or occupation of a building (PPCMOI), which requires a public consultation.

The Cité de l’Île project received initial approval from the borough council on December 14, but it still has to go back twice to elected officials.

Zero waste, zero emissions

The Borough Mayor, Marie-Andrée Mauger, points out that the project respects the density provided for in the Special Planning Program (PPU) for this sector.

She adds that the borough has obtained the development of a community room in the heart of the future district, that there will be a lot reserved for social housing, a playground, a cultural alley, trees, as well as green roofs and spaces for urban agriculture. The developer should also grant the City a right of way allowing access to the REM station, she says.

“This is a golden opportunity to develop a sector focused on sustainable mobility, five minutes from downtown, rather than sticking to the ‘everything by car’ mentality,” continued the mayor. There will be more parking for bicycles than for cars. This sector is a heat island, with several outdoor parking lots, so we are still going to green despite the construction of towers. »

The borough is conducting a traffic study, also revealed Mr.^me Mauger.

Recycle offices into apartments

At the heart of what will become the Cité de l’Île are two 10-storey office buildings built in 1992. One of them, which housed the Yellow Pages company for years, is in the process of being renovated. to be converted into 142 rental apartments.

According to the promoters of this project, Lachance Immobilier and the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ, such “recycling” of offices should multiply in the coming years.

“It forces us to build differently. It’s complex, but it’s interesting because it makes it possible to recycle an existing building and there is less and less land available,” said Martin Raymond, senior vice-president of real estate investments at the Fonds immobilier de solidarité FTQ.

To succeed in transforming the building, it was necessary to deconstruct it from the inside, including the plumbing and electricity, to completely redevelop the floors. The elevators have been retained, but adapted to the new standards in force.

Most of the windows have been kept and balconies have been added by creating inward recesses in the exterior walls.

Last month, the City of Montreal announced that it wanted to facilitate the conversion of office buildings into apartments, to help resolve the housing crisis, in the context where teleworking has emptied several buildings in the city center.

The municipal administration could thus facilitate zoning changes in sectors where it is currently not permitted to accommodate residential buildings.

According to data from the City of Montreal, the office vacancy rate in the business district is currently 16%, rising steadily since 2020. In comparison, the housing vacancy rate in Montreal is 3%, and it is even lower for affordable housing.

Ottawa also announced in 2021 a program of 300 million to support the conversion into affordable housing of empty office spaces that have appeared in downtown areas across the country since the start of the pandemic.