City copes with contentious demolition, redevelopment plans
One of Quebec’s leading historical groups is calling upon the city of Pointe-Claire to halt its plans to demolish the iconic Pioneer Bar.
Clément Locat, head of heritage for the Fédération Histoire Québec (FHQ), is once again asking the city to walk back from its plan to tear down the 117-year-old building and replace with a yet-to-be approved condo project.
The FHQ is an umbrella group of 275 heritage, historical and genealogical organizations representing 55,000 members across Quebec.
Locat’s letter critiques the city’s raucous demolition committee meeting held Aug. 9 at the Holiday Inn in Pointe-Claire attended by some 400 citizens who were overwhelmingly opposed to the project.
Ultimately, the demolition committee ruled in favour of the demolition, but did not approve the reutilization plan/condo project based on concerns about parking issues related to the city ’s decision to sell an adjacent parking lot to the condo developer for $730,000. The city cannot issue a demolition permit to the developer until a replacement project for the Pointe-Claire Village site has been approved.
“The meeting of Aug. 9, which gave rise to a strong citizen participation, leads us to ask ourselves: Who owns the city: the promoters, the municipal council or the citizens?” Locat wrote. “Today ’s decisions will have long-term impacts on the quality of the environment for current and future residents; it is important that they be carefully considered and shared.”
Locat also stated that the Pioneer demo/condo project contravenes the spirit of the city’s own Village Code which emphasizes the importance of preserving heritage buildings in the Pointe-Claire Village.
Although the Pioneer building (formerly known as the PointeClaire Hotel) is 117 years old and is listed as a place of heritage interest on the city website, a recent architectural appraisal of the building, paid for by the developer, found it had lost much of its heritage value since it was built in 1901.
But the FHQ argues the building could be restored.
“We invite you to save the existing building of the Pointe-Claire Hotel, to which the citizens are very attached and for which it is relatively easy to restore the original architectural elements from the old photographs.”
The Société pour le Sauvegarde du Patrimoine de Pointe-Claire appealed the demolition decision, according to Claude Arsenault, the society’s former president. “We are going to keep fighting to save the village from being destroyed,” said Arsenault.
Meanwhile, the city has sched- uled a Sept. 26 meeting, 7 p.m. at the Holiday Inn and Suites Pointe-Claire Hotel, to deal with the Pioneer property. City council will hear the appeal regarding the demolition committee’s decision concerning the approval of the demolition of the building and the rejection of the proposed reutilization plan for the land.