JOSHUA ALLAN
The 1019 Report
Anyone driving along Cité des Jeunes Blvd. in St. Lazare may have noticed some changes over the recent months. Several of the commercial buildings along the route have been put up for sale, while at least one has already been torn down. Change is coming to this sector. It’s all part of the municipality’s long-term vision to transform the corridor into a vibrant residential environment with about 1,200 new dwellings.
Fuelling the change is the anticipated opening of the $2.6-billion Vaudreuil-Soulanges Hospital – located just a kilometre from the St. Lazare border in Vaudreuil-Dorion – that will front on Cité des Jeunes.
Slated to open by the end of 2026, the hospital is expected to bring an influx of workers and economic activity to the area, which will increase the demand for housing in the region.
That expected increase in demand for housing, services and retail outlets prompted St. Lazare to plan for how the area will be developed, leading the town to draft a Special Urban Planning Program – known by its French acronym, PPU – which was released in 2022. It outlines what development along the Cité des Jeunes corridor will look like.
“The massive influx of workers with varied socio-economic profiles is expected to put pressure on housing demand, particularly for affordable units corresponding to the median salaries of hospital staff,” reads St. Lazare’s PPU in its explanation for the need for new development.
As the Cité des Jeunes sector is “the closest within the urban perimeter to the future hospital . . . it is also the one that contains the most vacant lots to be developed,” explained Alexandra Lemieux, St. Lazare’s director of urbanism services and the environment.
Vision for the future
The municipality’s vision for the sector sees new development along a 3.6-kilometre stretch of the two-lane artery – an area that runs roughly from just east of Mergl Farm in St. Lazare to just before Montée Labossière in Vaudreuil-Dorion. The plan for the sector is called Projet des Pins.
The area now is home to just over a dozen single-family houses, several commercial buildings and long stretches of land zoned for agricultural use, although little of it is actually being cultivated. A description of the PPU on the municipal website describes many of the empty plots as “herbaceous, shrubby and wooded wastelands, ditches and wooded edges.”
“On the whole, travelling along this stretch of Route 340 gives the impression of a territory in latency, with development imminent,” the document continues.
There is no plan to rezone the farmland, however.
The PPU envisions most of the empty stretches of land along the route to be transformed into an urban area containing about 1,200 new dwellings – a mix of townhouses and multi-family dwellings, with integrated affordable housing.
The PPU will also propose zones for new commercial businesses serving the everyday needs of these new residents, including a grocery store, day-care centres and restaurants, Lemieux added.
The plan also dedicates a future commitment to building a new elementary school in the area.
The closest school to the sector now is École des Étriers, located in a relatively new housing development off the intersection of Ste. Angélique Road and Cité des Jeunes. It is at capacity at 450 enrolments as of 2022.
“Given that the majority of residential development will take place in the Cité des Jeunes sector over the next few years, the town is targeting the PPU zone as the site for the future school,” the plan states.
Last year, St. Lazare Mayor Geneviève Lachance had confirmed that a new school would be located in the municipality after the French-language Trois Lacs school network determined it would need to build a new French-language school in the municipality to meet the needs of the ever-growing population.
There are currently eight schools in St. Lazare. Three of those schools – École à l’Orée du Bois, École Auclair and École des Étriers – are French. The remaining five are English – Evergreen Elementary, Birchwood Elementary, the junior campus of Westwood High, as well as both campuses of Forest Hill Elementary.
The exact location of a new school, however, has not been determined.
“The PPU is still in the early stages, zoning for such venues has not been drawn up yet,” said Christelle Paré, St. Lazare’s director of communications and community relations.
“When contracts with be signed with entrepreneurs, then a timeline will be drawn,” Paré added.
Looking down the road, the PPU paints a picture of what the Cité des Jeunes corridor may look like by the year 2035, describing it as “a true living environment that welcomes a variety of households within attractive and complete neighbourhoods.”
Simultaneous PPUs
Will the Cité des Jeunes corridor be a new commercial hub in St. Lazare?
Not exactly.
Lemieux pointed out that a simultaneous development plan is being outlined for St. Lazare’s village core.
Though less development-heavy than on Cité des Jeunes, plans for the future village area would stretch along Ste. Angélique Road, from Borderlais Street in the west, until Chevrier Road in the east.
This plan includes creating a municipal core that is less car-dependent, encouraging more active transportation via bike paths and better conditions for pedestrians, as well as improving “public green spaces.”
“The strategy behind the simultaneous production of two PPUs is to make sure that both sectors can grasp new opportunities, while being complimentary to each other, avoiding competition between the two,” Lemieux added.
One of the main concerns in past decades, as St. Lazare has seen its population grow, has been adequate water supply. This service has been factored into the municipality’s plans, Lemieux explained.
Development plans will respects water-use limits recommended in a 2022 study by TechnoRem Inc, an environmental consultant group. The study stated that the municipality has the water capacity to grow the population to around 27,000 residents – a number that has been repeated publicly by Lachance.
“The PPU takes these numbers into consideration,” Lemieux wrote in an email to The 1019 Report. “The new planning bylaws will be respectful of the water supply.”
How fast development proceeds will be up to the owners of the land along Cité des Jeunes. But as the number of ‘for sale’ signs grows, anticipated change appears to be imminent.