Residential project in northern tip gets warm welcome

In a separate article, Le Magazine reports specifics of this important project which will offer between 1600 to 2000 housing units spread out between five towers, town houses and several buildings of five to six floors. It will take pages and pages of this paper to give the project full justice as it probably constitutes the final phase of the development plan in L'Île-des-Sœurs by Proment Corporation. In introducing his speaker, animator Alain Laroche did not forget to mention that Proment had built almost 50% of all housing units in this area. The new phase will mark a new milestone in the list of achievements of Samuel Gewurz and his partners.

From the outset, the president of Proment made it a point to remind his audience that he thinks of the island’s residents as his best consultants. This is the reason why he insisted that participants should not hesitate to suggest and recommend their ideas to his designers. In line with this, he even distributed a questionnaire on which each attendee could write down their proposals after listening to the presentation.

The illustrations and diagrams actually describe the project better than words – especially for a massive project like this one. The speaker’s presentation was complemented by slides and plans so that the audience could fully appreciate the scope of the project. Even if the project will integrate a large percentage of housing units, it will be of a mixed character – to complement the business perspective of the Bell-Canderel development plan. An animated and three-dimensional slideshow provided an overview of the project; the “journey” was capped by a landing on the principal artery of the new “village.” This village will be home to boutiques and businesses that will occupy the first floors of the buildings while housing units will take up the upper floors. A street will lead to a plaza, next to public place to be laid out along the edge of the river.

Supported by his son, Ilan, executive vice-president of Proment, Mr. Gewurz explained the project’s different facets. One observation from the drawings is that the designers put a lot of emphasis and importance to the ecological and environmental aspects that satisfy the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) criteria. There will therefore be very little outside parking available around the buildings. The cars of owners and their visitors will be parked underground. Businesses and services will be located at the heart of this underground enabling people to go to them without using their cars.

A multi-functional path will also be laid along the river throughout the northern tip. This will allow going from one side of highway 15 to the other side via a pedestrian or bike path. Development work for this one is ahead of schedule and several occupants of the Bell Building are already using it to go to Place du Commerce and back.

Engineer Louis-Joseph Papineau, vice-president for development and construction of Proment, explained that the ND concept (Neighbourhood Development) was integrated into the LEED acronym to adequately define the criteria for a “green” urban neighbourhood. To cite an example of this avant-garde movement, he talked about the central air conditioning and heating network that will serve all of the buildings in this project. Not only will this network contribute to the reduction of energy consumption, but it will also make full use of available resources. Builders will take advantage of geothermal energy to heat and cool the units, just as had been done for the Vistal Towers in the southern tip.

From the presentation, people got an excellent idea of the whole project to be located in this new area and the president of Proment wanted to take advantage of the great number of attendees to ask them for their support or their disagreement. But the response from the audience was clear: without hesitating, they all stood up and warmly applauded and congratulated him.