March 29, 2024

The commercial real estate giant that owns the Fairview Pointe-Claire shopping centre is taking the city of Pointe-Claire in Montreal’s West Island to court after city council placed an interim freeze last month on development on several sectors of the municipality — including the shopping centre’s parking lot.

Council voted in February to stop issuing permits for the construction of new buildings or the conversion of new ones in the city centre, along with Pointe-Claire Village, Valois Village and several shopping centres.

The freeze is in effect for 90 days but could last as long as two years, to give the city time to hold public consultations on a new urban plan.

Cadillac Fairview, a Canadian company that owns and develops properties across Canada and the United States, filed legal proceedings with the Quebec Superior Court on Wednesday.

The company said it was caught unaware by what senior vice-president Brian Salpeter called an “unexpected and abrupt about-face” to its plan submitted last year to turn part of its parking lot into a “pedestrian-friendly environment” within walking distance of the new Réseau express métropolitain (REM) rail link and bus station. 

In a statement, he said that plan is now in jeopardy.

Salpeter said the company had been “working in concert with the city” until the freeze was declared, and said it is the first time in the mall’s 57-year history that the company has been unable to “engage in constructive dialogue with the city.”

He said the plan was to turn “a sea of asphalt surrounding the shopping centre and a noted heat island” into a walkable neighbourhood, featuring an outdoor plaza, a seniors’ residence, two residential rental buildings, a food market and restaurants.

Geneviève Lussier, spokesperson for the group Save the Fairview Forest, says Pointe-Claire’s development freeze shows her group’s message is being heard. (Chloe Ranaldi/CBC News)

One of the points of contention in the proposed plan is the future of a forest just west of the shopping centre, which is owned by Cadillac Fairview.

“In the last 15 months, we have all worked very hard to make sure that our administration understood how essential green spaces are to the makeup of our city,” wrote Geneviève Lussier, spokesperson for the Save the Fairview Forest group on its Facebook page last month.

“With your help, we got the message across!”

Cadillac Fairview said at the time that development would not infringe on the forest.

Preserving that forest was a key plank in Pointe-Claire Mayor Tim Thomas’s election platform in November.

“As far as I know, we have absolutely nothing submitted in writing,” from the developer that guarantee the forest would be protected, he told CBC Montreal’s Daybreak  last month.

Now that the developer has filed legal proceedings, Pointe-Claire officials won’t be commenting further, a spokesperson for the city said on Friday.