Cavendish Blvd.

By Joel Goldenberg and Joel Ceausu

The Suburban

Côte St. Luc councillor Dida Berku is accusing the City of Montreal of intentionally leaving out any link between the Hippodrome development and Cavendish Blvd. in CSL as part of the Hippodrome plan, even as Plante said a connection between Cavendish in CSL and Jean Talon is a priority as part of the development.

“It’s what we’ve been saying for the past 20 years — it’s a missing link,” Berku told The Suburban as she was looking at the master plan map. “There’s 118 pages of maps, drawing and schematics and pictures of tramways, and nowhere does it connect to Cavendish. It says it will, eventually, but there’s no plan, no indication of what it will look like.”Berku says this is contrary to Montreal’s 2022 plan “which had a clear connection from Cavendish to the Jean Talon area, and it’s not in this plan. It stops in CDN-NDG.

“They have deliberately, intentionally omitted it. Why? This is the mystery of the decade! In our view, the only way to develop this whole area, including the Hippodrome, is to open Cavendish first. Not just to decongest, but to provide the necessary access and egress from a security perspective. How can you have a dead end?!”

Mayor Mitchell Brownstein said that he brought up the Cavendish extension at last week’s agglomeration meeting, and also asked why the Cavendish environmental study is not moving forward.”The City claimed the route of an eventual extension is complicated by Hydro-Québec servitudes, however that is false. CSL has a letter from Hydro-Québec stating that the proposed route has no impact on its servitudes. Montreal’s fact-free response has convinced me it is acting in bad faith and continues to ignore its obligation to build the Cavendish extension project which was a condition by the province when it ceded the Hippodrome land to the City of Montreal for $1. CSL and its partners must move forward to enforce the contractual agreement which may very well require legal action.”

The city’s Hippodrome plan excluding Cavendish has come about a decade late and eight months after it was last promised. Billed as a “city within a city,” the Plante administration’s Master Plan for the Namur-Hippodrome sector lays the foundation for a massive urban development project in the Snowdon district of Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

The city’s plan envisions some 20,000 new homes to accommodate a potential population of up to 40,000 people, half of which will be on the site of the old racetrack, and the city says it will shelter about half of the units from speculation. The future eco-district will include housing intended for low- or moderate-income households, with some half of those racetrack-slated units for affordable housing.

The three-phase plan for a carbon-neutral sector that traverses a newly covered portion of Décarie, also includes plans for a tramway along a newly developed Jean Talon, some 14 hectares of new parks and public squares, and a central park and green belt with “massive planting of trees and plants.” The city is promising sports, community and cultural facilities, local services, schools and employment areas.

The plan requires more than $1 billion in infrastructure investment, and there are millions already slated for preliminary studies for different elements like the tramway. Jean Talon will be extended to Cavendish, but there is no specific mention of plans for the Cavendish extension.

Mayor Plante said that, “by being the owner and developer of this land, we are seizing this opportunity of the century to make this new district a showcase of Montreal’s ambitions, particularly in terms of innovation, inclusion and citizen participation.”The Master Plan will be subject to a final public consultation next month, with final adoption expected later this year. The city says the project will be completed in “accelerated mode,” targeting a 10-year infrastructure completion schedule, and will be ready to issue first construction permits next year.

Saint-Laurent Mayor and Official Opposition Critic for infrastructure Alan DeSousa says the potential development of the Hippodrome owes much to the dedication of community and philanthropic organizations, “particularly through the GALOPH (Hippodrome Project Acceleration Committee). However, uncertainties persist due to the absence of a clear strategy to attract developers and build 10,000 affordable housing units.”

He called the project’s realization “merely a conceptual goal for now,” noting cost estimates are lacking, “and the decision to prioritize the announcement of a tramway project while remaining silent on the Cavendish extension underscores a lack of decisive leadership by the Plante administration after seven years of inaction.” n