Identity crisis

A proposed 65-storey skyscraper prompts Quebec City to grapple with its image

Quebec City’s centuries-old architecture has earned it a reputation as one of Canada’s most beautiful cities, but opponents of a plan to build the province’s tallest skyscraper fear that is about to change.

At public meetings this week in the provincial capital, residents questioned whether the desire to project the city as a modern metropolis is clouding the judgment of city hall, which supports plans for the 65-storey building.

“Why 65 floors?” Francois Marchand, an urban planning lawyer who attended a meeting Monday, asked in an interview. “The reason is they want to have the highest building between Toronto and Quebec City, higher than the highest one in Montreal. That’s not a criteria for good land planning.”

The developer, Groupe Dallaire, describes the $755-million project as a “complete vertical neighbourhood” that will include apartments, offices, hotel rooms, a public square and a concert hall.

Called “Le Phare ” - French for beacon - it will tower over the surrounding Ste-Foy neighbourhood and the city at large. It will feature an observatory and what the developer is calling the tallest restaurant east of Toronto.

While the skyscraper’s supporters like the idea of a bold modern building at the city’s gateway, Marchand says the structure will stand out like a “sequoia in the plains.”

Videos and drawings on the project’s website show four glassand-metal buildings clustered around a central courtyard, with a three-sided tower soaring above the others.

Mayor Regis Labeaume has been a vocal advocate of the project, saying it fits into the city’s “development vision.” It will help create “a dense, mixed, inhabited and living urban centre where quality of life predominates,” Labeaume said in a recent press release.