Montreal shows off new plan for Bridge-Bonaventure featuring dense, off-market housing

Matthew Lapierre · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 31, 2025 12:10 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Bridge-Bonaventure, the neighbourhood connected the banks of the St. Lawrence River successful Montreal's Sud-Ouest borough, volition beryllium a densely populated country featuring ample residential towers filled with off-market housing. 

That's the caller imaginativeness for the country that Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante presented connected Monday.

The program features "up to" 13,500 lodging units — much than treble what the metropolis had antecedently earmarked for the sector. 

"We volition marque this an exemplary neighbourhood that includes an employment hub, affordable lodging and greenish spaces linked to the river, conscionable a stone's propulsion from downtown," said Plante. 

But the metropolis wants astatine slightest 40 per cent of those caller lodging units to beryllium off-market. Off-market lodging could beryllium either affordable units, which are rental units intended to beryllium offered astatine oregon beneath marketplace rates, oregon societal lodging units, which are managed by the metropolis and wherever tenants wage rent decided by a percent of their income. 

Plante did not accidental however overmuch of the off-market lodging would beryllium devoted to societal oregon affordable units. 

Bridge-Bonaventure is an astir 2.3 quadrate kilometre country betwixt the Lachine Canal, the Old Port and the St. Lawrence River. Some of the onshore successful the neighbourhood, including Silo No. 5 — a ample abandoned silo operation disposable from the Old Port — is owned by the Canada Lands Company, a Crown corporation. 

Stéphan Déry, the president of the Canada Lands Company, accompanied Plante astatine a Monday greeting property league to beforehand the city's caller program for the neighbourhood. 

He said the Canada Lands Company volition make the onshore it owns successful the country into a "dynamic and inclusive place." The city's program includes processing the Peel Basin into a lodging hub that includes a formation with swimming access. 

The metropolis has agelong considered Bridge-Bonaventure a neighbourhood ripe for development, but developers and assemblage activists person presented astatine times duelling visions of however the country should beryllium built up.

During nationalist consultations successful 2018, residents who unrecorded adjacent the country had raised concerns astir the assemblage becoming "another Griffintown." 

Some residents kick that Griffintown, a dense postulation of residential buildings conscionable northbound of Bridge-Bonaventure, lacks greenspace and nationalist infrastructure, including a schoolhouse and a wellness centre. 

Plante's imaginativeness for the neighbourhood includes 43 hectares of greenish abstraction and 600,000 quadrate metres acceptable speech for businesses and institutions similar schools. 

She besides said the metropolis intends to marque definite it is connected to the nationalist transit networks, and features motorcycle infrastructure and different elements that volition marque it a "complete neighbourhood." 

Some developers person said the city's archetypal plans for the neighbourhood, which featured lower-rise lodging and little density, would beryllium unprofitable. Building successful the country is apt to beryllium costly due to the fact that overmuch of the onshore is erstwhile concern territory that needs to beryllium decontaminated. 

The metropolis says the new, higher-density program for the country volition guarantee developers put there, adjacent if they volition beryllium required to physique a higher proportionality of societal housing. 

Francis Dolan, a assemblage organizer with Regroupement accusation logement de Pointe-Saint-Charles, a lodging rights group, said helium was blessed to spot the metropolis including ample percentages of off-market lodging successful their plan. 

He said the lodging situation was hitting the neighbourhood peculiarly hard. Two-bedroom apartments are being enactment up for rent for arsenic overmuch arsenic $2,500. 

"Here successful the Sud-Ouest, we are successful a large lodging crisis. Every caller task made by the backstage marketplace are truly retired of price," helium said. 

He hoped thousands of caller off-market units could assistance much radical find a location they tin afford. 

But Catherine Lussier, the coordinator of the lodging rights radical FRAPRU, said adjacent those caller units volition not beryllium capable to give a societal lodging portion to everyone who needs one.

She said she had wanted each the units built connected the nationalist onshore successful the Bridge-Bonaventure assemblage to beryllium off-market.

"Considering it's connected nationalist onshore we would expect those lands to beryllium 100 per cent reserved for societal housing," she said. "They are public. They should enactment public."