The City of Montreal is planning to build a carbon-neutral district of 20,000 housing units on the site of the former Montreal Hippodrome and land east of the Namur Metro station.
Sandwiched between a railway yard, highway and industrial buildings in northwestern Montreal, the huge swath of land used to house the former Blue Bonnets track, where horses raced for over a century. In 2017, the city acquired the land from Quebec.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante has called the plan Quebec’s largest real estate redevelopment project in the past decade.
But skeptics beware, this is not the first time the city announced plans for the empty lot, prompting calls for affordable housing projects while so far failing to ignite interest from developers.
In its 120-page master plan, the City of Montreal makes clear that a new tram line on Jean-Talon Street is central to the whole project. It says studies will determine the tramway route, but it may extend all the way to the northern portion of Cavendish Boulevard.
“We are talking about 20,000 homes. There can’t be 20,000 new cars here,” said Plante.
An ecological, affordable neighborhood
This new district, named “Namur-Hippodrome,” will have green spaces, parks and public squares. It will also include local businesses and services, health-care facilities, two primary schools and one high school.
According to the plans, the district will be built around a large park with a pond, paths and leisure spaces.
Putting the number of possible residents at 40,000 Montrealers, Robert Beaudry, the executive committee member responsible for urban planning and the fight against homelessness, compared the project to a population the size of Boucherville, Que.
“It’s a city within the city that we are building,” he said.
For the project to succeed, Plante said the housing will have to be affordable, with half of the housing units “off the market,” but she did not provide details about how the city would shield those units from surging rent prices.
Getting developers onboard
In 2022, the city launched a call for tenders to develop the land, but it failed to get developers behind the plan. The call included the obligation to provide 60 per cent affordable condos over 30 years. The minimum bid was $10 million.
According to developers interviewed at the time, real estate market prices, rising construction costs and the regulations for subsidized housing meant that this model was not economically viable for them.
Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough mayor Gracia Kasoki Katahwa says that developers have since been consulted by the Groupe d’accélération pour l’optimisation du projet de l’Hippodrome (GALOPH), a working group created to get the construction project moving, to discuss business plans and financing.
“Times are very difficult for promoters. But we worked with them,” said Kasoki Katahwa.
She says GALOPH has been working to find ways to make the project attractive as a business venture and has been getting a lot of calls from property owners around Namur Metro station.