Coderre’s plan for skyscrapers goes against Montreal’s DNA, Lambert says
“The city will then lose its own character and then become just like any other city,” Phyllis Lambert says of former mayor’s ideas.
Linda Gyulai • Montreal Gazette
Publishing date: Mar 31, 2021
Denis Coderre’s suggestions to allow downtown towers that rise above Mount Royal and allow the REM de l’Est to be built above-ground near downtown and the riverfront in the east end are urban planning heresy, says Montreal’s doyenne of heritage, architect Phyllis Lambert.
“Denis Coderre’s idea that you build skyscrapers in Montreal and also that you put the REM in Old Montreal, I think those are two things that go against our whole DNA,” Lambert said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette on Wednesday.
“The mountain is part of our whole history of Montreal.”
It has been less than a week since Coderre announced his intention to run against Mayor Valérie Plante in the Nov. 7 municipal election in a bid to win back the seat he lost to Plante in 2017. But his ideas on urban planning, encapsulated in his new book, Retrouver Montréal (Rediscovering Montreal), appear to have already made him one noteworthy enemy.
Lambert, founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and founder of Heritage Montreal, said the idea of allowing more and taller high-rises downtown, regardless of whether they compete with Mount Royal, would destroy Montreal.
“You can’t try to make Montreal a city of highrise buildings because the buildings we build now are all the same everywhere,” she said, adding that the suggestion is like sticking a finger in the eye of generations of Montrealers who fought to preserve the mountain and the views onto it.
“The city will then lose its own character and then become just like any other city. Then what will we have?”
Mount Royal and Old Montreal are also the attractions that bring visitors to the city, Lambert added.
“If you don’t have that, what are you going to have? Some skyscrapers for people to come and see?” she asked.
Lambert also evoked the class struggle, calling Coderre’s idea “highrise towers for the rich that hide the mountain.”
As for the REM, Lambert said its expansion to the east planned by CDPQ Infra has raised concerns about urban scarring if portions are built above-ground in sensitive areas as planned.
“I wouldn’t want to see it anywhere,” she added of the REM. “I think it’s very faulty governance that ever led to it be given to one company that’s going to make money out of it. It’s privatizing the whole of major transportation. That’s absolutely wrong, and there’s been no consultation on it.”
Reached on Wednesday, Coderre said he intended for his book to provoke a debate of ideas in the coming election campaign.
“There is room for nuance, there is room for dialogue,” he said when told of Lambert’s comments.
“When I spoke about the heights, it doesn’t mean we need to have skyscrapers. If we want to increase densities, there are ways. I salute every point of view. The book itself was sending a message that we need to rebuild this place, we need to show love to our cherished metropolis. It’s not a fight. It’s about ideas, it’s about issues and it’s about defining the kind of downtown and metropolis we want.”
As for the REM de l’Est, Coderre said “we should all talk about it without jeopardizing everything.”
It was Plante’s adviser, Jimmy Zoubris, former vice-president of her Projet Montréal party, who contacted the Montreal Gazette to suggest the interview with Lambert.
However, Lambert said she’s “not endorsing anyone for the moment. I’m certainly not endorsing Denis Coderre.”
Lambert’s nephew, Stephen Bronfman, is an investor through family-owned Claridge Inc. in a 38-storey tower that a developer is building on the former Montreal Children’s Hospital site at Atwater Ave. and Tupper St. The project advertises upper-floor penthouses starting at $2 million.
“I don’t think this conversation is going anywhere,” Lambert said, when asked what she thought of the project. But, she added, she has asked her nephew about the investment. “But what am I going to do? Stop him from doing it?”
Stephen Bronfman, meanwhile, is leading a group trying to bring back Major League Baseball to Montreal. The group announced in 2019 it had chosen a site at the Peel Basin for a new stadium.
Coderre, a baseball fan and new ballpark booster, seemed suddenly cool to the idea of public financing for it this week, though Premier François Legault declared that Quebec would be willing to subsidize construction if a new stadium can be shown will generate revenue for the province. Coderre declared that “the timing isn’t good because we’re in the middle of a pandemic.”
Plante has gone the other way. As a mayoral candidate in 2017, she vowed “not a penny” of public money will be spent on a new stadium unless Montrealers say yes in a referendum she promised in the 2021 election. Plante stood in front of a novelty cheque for $500 million made out to Major League Baseball with a bogus signature from Denis Coderre, and accused him of negotiating for a return of baseball behind taxpayers’ backs.
Plante sounded more enthusiastic after winning power. In 2018, she met with Bronfman and businessman Mitch Garber from the group of investors. Emerging arm-in-arm with Bronfman at city hall, Plante declared that “if the return of a baseball team is good for Montreal, we’re in.”
Lambert said she has seen plans for the ballpark.
“It could be okay,” she said. “The city has demanded, as far as I know, a lot of things, and they’re being complied with. So I think it could be possible.”
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STÉPHANIE GRAMMOND
