Kramberger: It's a win-win scenario as Ste-Anne buys waterfront lot, removes eyesore

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Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue may not have had it marked in its city planning program, however metropolis council made the appropriate determination to take a position $500,000 to accumulate a property alongside the boardwalk in its iconic village.

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The unanimous approval for the allotment throughout a particular metropolis council assembly final week is welcomed since it’ll take away an eyesore that has been round because the constructing at 82-84 Ste-Anne St., which had housed Marco Bar & Grill, was gutted by a blaze in April 2019. Since then, many residents and close by enterprise house owners have been left questioning when it might be demolished.

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The $500,000 deal is a major funding for the demerged municipality of round 5,000 residents, which has an annual working price range of about $22.5 million in 2023. But it looks as if a sweetheart deal for the town on the western tip of Montreal Island, contemplating the municipal evaluation roll evaluates the 556.4-square-metre lot and constructing at $772,600. It’s a outstanding spot within the coronary heart of Ste-Anne’s business and vacationer space, and that’s on prime of it dealing with the lake, a location that usually comes at a premium in the true property market.

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It’s anticipated the town will demolish the boarded-up constructing by mid-June, which certainly could be appreciated by native eating places that rely on a busy summer season season.

The area will ultimately be transformed right into a park to supply higher public entry to the boardwalk alongside Lake St. Louis that results in the canal and lock, which is a nationwide heritage web site run by Parks Canada.

The town purchased the lot from an proprietor who bought it in 2021 and had hoped to redevelop it and two adjoining heaps with a possible three- or four-storey combined residential-commercial constructing. However the preliminary imaginative and prescient mentioned went above the present zoning limits for the village strip, Mayor Paola Hawa stated.

A combined apartment mission of such a scale would have destroyed the village’s character, she added.

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“The village is a protected space … with fascinating historical past and structure. It’s a village. It’s not condo-ville,” Hawa stated.

The chance for the town to purchase and safe the lot got here up a couple of months in the past as soon as the proprietor realized the imaginative and prescient mentioned wouldn’t be acceptable for the town, Hawa stated. The town had beforehand launched authorized motion to power a demolition in addition to to redevelop a two-storey constructing.

Underneath these circumstances, it’s an appropriate long-term funding to supply extra entry to the water, opening views of the lake from Ste-Anne St., and so as to add “one other place for individuals to sit down and ponder life,” the mayor famous. “It’s going to be there for generations to come back.”

In the meantime, Ste-Anne additionally introduced it might redevelop Lalonde Park close to the boardwalk, a parcel of land that was as soon as the positioning of a resto-pub gutted by fireplace within the late Nineties. The town plans to put in new city furnishings and a washroom facility on the park, and an adjoining parking space will even be reorganized. Work on this park mission gained’t begin till the top of August, Hawa stated.

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As a part of a brand new city planning program to be ironed out subsequent 12 months, Ste-Anne would possibly take into account revamping the boardwalk space. The worth tag for a possible boardwalk overhaul mission that had been mentioned a couple of years in the past was about $21 million, Hawa recalled.

Ste-Anne’s buy is modest in comparison with some current big-ticket property acquisitions for public use by different West Island cities, which have been additionally completed on the fly and never particularly talked about in an city planning program.

Pointe-Claire’s earlier administration beneath then-mayor John Belvedere — confronted with some dissent, together with a sole nay vote on council — bought the previous West Island YMCA facility on Brunswick Blvd. for $9 million in 2021. Final 12 months, the town reopened and renamed the recreation and sports activities centre after Olive Louise Urquhart, the primary and solely lady mayor of Pointe-Claire.

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Final 12 months, Dorval council authorized the $8-million buy of the Quatre Vents property on Dahlia Ave. that was as soon as residence to Désiré Girouard, the primary mayor of the Village of Dorval in 1892. The waterfront property was positioned available on the market by Congrégation Notre-Dame after the retired nuns who had resided there since 1958 moved out.

Often, elected municipal officers want to face up and result in benefit from market alternatives, investing public funds with a view to purchase and defend properties that will profit their communities.

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