New Laurier tower caps Medway’s formula mixing medicine with housing
Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
If things go as planned, in the not-too-distant future, a 28-storey tower containing apartments and medical offices will rise from a lot on Boulevard Laurier which was once home to Red Lobster and Burger King franchises.
The as-yet-unnamed $400-million project is the latest – and largest – venture of the Lévis-based Medway company, which already has four new major buildings slated to be delivered in the region over the next year.
They are the Complexe Santé Rivière Saint-Charles, on Boul. Wilfrid-Hamel; the Complexe Santé in Rivière- du-Loup; Le Kali, the site of a former restaurant of that name on Boul. Charest Est; and Le Taniata, in Saint-Jean-Chrysostome.
The projects are all products of Medway’s formula of combining medical administration services with commercial and residential development.
The latest project at 3000 Boul. Laurier typifies the company’s partnership with the medical community in providing health-care offices and infrastructure within a mostly residential complex.
Company founder and president Yan Boudreau explained in a phone interview how Medway has been working with the Groupe de médecine de famille (GMF) Laurier for about two years to devise the plan.
The GMF, comprising some 18 doctors and currently located across Boulevard Laurier in the Delta building, decided last year to cut ties with the local public Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux (CIUSSS) and hire Medway to handle its administration.
The Laurier GMF, which is also a Université Laval- associated teaching facility for family doctors, is the fifth out of six GMFs in the capital region to leave the CIUSSS administration, according to Dr. Caroline Laberge, spokesperson for the unit, as quoted in a Radio-Canada story. It will remain a public clinic.
Boudreau said the latest project follows the pattern Medway has specialized in for the past five years of combining residential housing with medical clinics. “It all starts with a public medical clinic,” in tandem with the city’s “interest in having mixed-use projects [given] all the housing needs.”
Boudreau said his company has worked closely with the city to ensure the project meets the criteria for speedy approval. An important factor, as well, is that the building would be close to the future tramway line.
The building will have 25 storeys with a total of 896 residential units, half of which, Boudreau said, would be designated as affordable housing with rents of less than $1,500 a month. The three bottom floors will be devoted to the GMF once it makes the move to the new building.
Boudreau said he hopes that once the project gets the city’s green light, clearing and excavation of the site would begin in the fall and construction in the spring. Completion is targeted for 2032.
With the Laurier project, Medway now has some 30 buildings in its portfolio, about half of which are mixed medical-residential projects now open or in the works.
Boudreau, 45, is a native of Havre Aubert in the Magdalen Islands who graduated from Western University’s business program thanks to a football scholarship. He left his job in banking 15 years ago and decided to get into real estate.
“When you want to start in real estate, you either have a lot of capital, which I didn’t have, or you find a niche and you find ways to deliver services and products maybe a lot of developers don’t want to take care of, like medical services, which is our core business.”
Boudreau also credits the Medway team of professionals with a wide set of expertise as a reason for the company’s rapid growth.
When it’s completed, the Medway building on Boul. Laurier would be in a three-way tie for third tallest in Quebec City. The Hilton Hotel and Édifice Jules-Dallaire II on Boul. Laurier are also 28 storeys. The two tallest are Place Hauteville with the Delta Hotel at 34 storeys, and the Édifice Marie-Guyart, the Quebec government building which houses the Observatoire de la Capitale, at 33 storeys.
Boudreau said he felt “excited, to be honest” to be taking on “our biggest project ever.” He emphasized the social aspect of what will inevitably be a high-profile and prestigious building on the city’s main thoroughfare.
“We really want to address the capacity of the population to pay rent, and that’s our bet that we [can] deliver new and really nice-looking units with the affordable rent.”