New HEC Montréal Complex gets green light
Changes near St. Patrick’s Basilica spark concern from heritage advocates
A new $184-million university pavilion will transform the area around St. Patrick’s Basilica in downtown Montreal.
The HEC Montréal business school will build a sprawling complex there after Quebec gave the project the green light and $94 million in funding on Thursday.
Proponents say the building, to be used by 1,600 people daily starting in August 2021, will revitalize the area.
But some residents complain it will remove a rare patch of downtown green space and a heritage group has raised concerns about the ruins of a 19th-century home for the aged and homeless on the site.
Affiliated with the Université de Montréal, HEC, based in Côte-des-Neiges, says it needs a downtown base to be closer to Montreal’s business community and to better serve its growing student body. The new pavilion, parts of which will be five, six and eight storeys, will house MBA, graduate and executive-training programs.
Part of the new building will be on de la Gauchetière St., currently the site of a green esplanade and the foundations of the St. Bridget’s Asylum and Night Refuge, which opened in 1869. The building was demolished in the 1970s.
Though it has been used as a park for years by nearby residents and workers in surrounding office towers, the land was owned by St. Patrick’s. The church recently sold the land, as well as a parking lot, to HEC for an undisclosed sum.
Loretta Cianci, HEC’s director of campus development, said about half the grassed area the school bought from St. Patrick’s will be incorporated into the new building, with the rest used as an outdoor terrasse and green space.
HEC is working with the city and St. Patrick’s to create a public space around the new pavilion that will integrate a new front garden the church is planning.
“It’s going to revitalize that whole block and it’s going to elevate the quality of the space,” Cianci said.
She said the school will “commemorate the foundations” of St. Bridget’s. Some of the stones will be used to build outdoor seating, and the outline of the old building will be highlighted.
Phil Chu, who lives near St. Patrick’s and has been organizing opposition to the plan, said neighbours are disappointed because green space is disappearing even as more people move into the area in new condo buildings.
“We’re devastated — they’re destroying half of the green space,” Chu said, adding he’s disappointed that Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration didn’t step in to preserve the area.
“That green space is magnificent as it is. If any city or HEC official lived in the same neighbourhood, could they honestly look at anybody in the eye and tell them this is going to be an improvement?”
Dinu Bumbaru, policy director at Heritage Montreal, said HEC should install historical markers highlighting the role St. Bridget’s played in the history of St. Patrick’s and Montreal’s Irish community.
He also called on the city to revive a long-dormant plan to create a “sentier des trois églises — a project to landscape and connect the spaces around St. Patrick’s, St. James United and le Gésu, all of which are along St-Alexandre St. These three spaces are a genuine opportunity to improve the livability of downtown.”
City councillor Robert Beaudry, a member of Plante’s Projet Montréal, said the HEC project will help spur improvements.
The current green space “is of poor quality, with many sick and dead trees,” he said.
Montreal will use a deal signed last month with the Université du Québec à Montréal as a model for creating public spaces around St. Patrick’s, he said. Under the 25year agreement, the city will renovate several outdoor areas on the university’s downtown campus, and the school will maintain them. They will be open to the public.
“We know that when there is green space downtown, it’s precious and we want to conserve it and enhance it so the public can use it,” Beaudry said.
Msgr. Francis Coyle, pastor of St. Patrick, said money raised by the land sale will help finance church operations well into the future.
The plan, approved by the Archdiocese of Quebec and the Vatican, will eliminate ugly parking lots next to and in front of the church, with much of the freed-up space repurposed for public use, Coyle said.
“People are worried about it, but it’s going to be green” around St. Patrick’s, Coyle said. “There will be walkways and greenery and places to sit down — a welcoming place. St. Patrick’s has always been a welcoming place and we want to keep it that way.”
Opened on St. Patrick’s Day in 1847, the basilica is designated a national historic site and a heritage building. It is known for its French Gothic Revival architecture, its large scale and the support it provided during the influx of Irish immigrants in the 19th century.
Coyle said HEC’s educational role is in keeping with St. Patrick’s mission, noting the church rejected proposals to build hotel and condo buildings on the land.
As for the ruins of St. Bridget’s, Coyle said: “The basilica is the historic monument. A couple of stones in the ground is not historic, although we want to remember it.”