City's development plan unveiled to mixed reaction

The City wants to amend a portion of the City of Montreal's master blueprint on urban development applying to Westmount. Montreal adopted it in 2004 during the years of the megacity merger. Westmount officials have said their proposed draft plan contains only a few minor changes from the original version.

The plan, which was compiled by the City's urban planning director, Joanne Poirier, with the assistance of private consultant Pierre Landry, is divided into five sections. They provide a picture of the territory's current state and population, the planning approach, planning goals and issues, and proposed directions for areas to be revitalized.

In a section pertaining to heritage and architecture, the document notes Westmount's heritage buildings are threatened by demolition and inappropriate modifications because of growing development pressures. It also points out "a growing trend for larger and larger homes"

Among other prescribed remedies, the City plans to investigate the possibility of implementing a control on the maximum volume or floor area of buildings, to prevent addition of new buildings that would be out of scale with rest of a street.

Noting that some public or commercial buildings are not always accessible to handicapped people, the plan also favours the adoption of measures to guarantee barrier-free access to public buildings.

In a section dealing with the protection of views and landscapes, the plan says views from and of the mountain could be threatened by inappropriate new construction. "The subdivision of certain large properties could also bring about the construction of buildings that could compromise the landscape," it says.

Among other things, the plan advocates tightening existing measures to preserve large remaining lots from inappropriate subdivision, and adopting bylaws to protect views from public spaces "and possibly from private buildings."

In a section detailing the revitalization of two Westmount neighbourhoods that have sometimes tended to be overlooked, the City says that the Richelieu area, which is south of the Ville Marie Expressway and currently zoned for light industrial use, should be redeveloped for residential purposes. They also advocate the revitalization with a residential function of Tupper Street to encourage the development of reasonably-priced housing for young families.

In a wide-ranging critique of the master plan, Bruce Anderson, a Côte St. Antoine Road resident who was once a member of the City's architectural and planning commission, criticized the City's approach to the maintenance of some parks, while adding, "the objectives are good, but the follow-through isn't …"

"It seems to me the City has dropped the ball with respect to the Sunnyside Park," he said, referring to the park just under the mountain lookout where Westmount cut down a large number of trees last year as part of a re-landscaping program.

"It's too bad that character of the natural urban forest hasn't been maintained from the summit right down to Sunnyside," said Anderson, who also questioned what the City meant by "reasonably-priced" housing on Tupper Street. He suggested it could involve Westmount having to pay subsidies.

Acknowledging that the City could end up subsidizing such projects, Mayor Karin Marks said, "That's something that we're trying to grapple with a little bit — is there something that we can do, and maybe we can't — to look at market forces and to look at a way of enabling diversity and more young people?"

City Councillor Patrick Martin, who took part in the meeting as a citizen, also questioned certain aspects of the plans for Tupper, including the development of housing projects for young families. "We don't want to be a community that is primarily older people," Marks said, defending the City's position.

"We want to be a community that is well-knit and that really has the regeneration. So at the moment, it's something that is on paper as a possibility. It's not going to happen without a lot of public input … We're not planning to do anything in the next two years on it and it's in the next four years that this planning document will be rewritten."