Opinion: The fox is within the henhouse at Blue Bonnets website

Article content material

Essential selections will probably be made within the coming months about the way forward for the Namur-Hippodrome district, whose growth may have a serious affect on the provision of housing.

This district, which incorporates the previous Blue Bonnets racetrack, is partly publicly owned, and the Metropolis of Montreal intends to construct an eco-district of 12,500 housing models, together with 6,000 on the Blue Bonnets website, a few of which will probably be meant to learn low- and modest-income Montrealers.

Article content material

Article content material

The Metropolis of Montreal and the Quebec authorities introduced Might 29 the creation of the Groupe d’Accélération pour l’Optimisation du Projet de l’Hippodrome. GALOPH is made up of 15 members, together with leaders in the actual property and monetary industries who’ve been liable for most of the large-scale residential initiatives which have reworked or are remodeling downtown, Centre-Sud, Sud-Ouest and Griffintown.

The committee contains representatives of funding funds Claridge, Ivanhoé-Cambridge (CDPQ) and Fonds de solidarité FTQ, in addition to executives from real-estate growth firms Prével, Broccolini and Mouvement Desjardins. To a lesser extent, the committee contains representatives from public and group organizations. Its mission is to attract up a marketing strategy that’s “balanced and makes it doable to attain social aims, whereas remaining related to buyers.”

The creation of GALOPH comes after the real-estate business appeared to balk at a name for tenders on the previous racetrack website for a challenge that would come with 60 per cent inexpensive housing, suggesting the town’s stringent affordability necessities had been hindering growth within the space.

Article content material

Article content material

The earlier mannequin carried out by Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration was unworkable for builders, as a result of they couldn’t make a revenue from it, in line with Pierre Boivin, president and CEO of Claridge and co-chair of GALOPH.

The conclusion to be drawn from that is that the event of the Namur-Hippodrome district envisioned by GALOPH will now need to make extra room for revenue and fewer for inexpensive housing. Within the absence of considerable public funding to offer a real various, the general public and group gamers gathered across the desk may have little probability of adjusting something. They should make do, as soon as once more, with the leftovers. As has been the case for almost 20 years, social housing wants are more likely to take a again seat.

Together with the Bridge-Bonaventure sector, the Namur-Hippodrome district is without doubt one of the final main websites to be developed. The municipal administration is actually in a tough place, as it’s beneath heavy stress from real-estate lobbies and the provincial authorities, which has threatened to take over the location except it strikes ahead extra rapidly. We deplore that the town appears to have given up on a imaginative and prescient of a social-oriented growth on one the few items of municipal property.

By opening the door to blatant conflicts of curiosity — the members of GALOPH might immediately profit from the plan they suggest — the creation of this committee is just not solely an invite to the fox to enter the henhouse, but in addition to handle it.

Chloé Beaulieu, Louis Gaudreau, Luise Hellwig, Jason Prince and Eric Shragge are members of the housing committee at Prenons la ville, a coalition of social activists and group teams.

Article content material

Article content material