Building boom grows in Laval
Former farmland turning into condos
The billboards at the intersection of Chomedey and St. Elzéar Blvds. in Laval are impossible to miss. There are five of them, advertising condos for sale in projects with names like Quintessence, Lumière and Royal Chomedey.
The signs are pointing to what’s emerged as a hub of construction activity, transforming vast tracts of fertile land once used by farmers to grow vegetables and flowers, into a rapidly expanding residential neighbourhood.
The snow banks on the sides of the road will eventually be replaced with construction trucks and crews as the city of Laval doubles the width of St. Elzéar — now a two-lane road — into a four-lane strip with a tree-covered median between Curé Labelle and Chomedey Blvds,. developers said. The wider street is needed to accommodate increased traffic f rom an estimated 2,000 new residential units now under construction, or planned for the area.
“For someone to take farmland ... and put a $180-million project there, that’s a gamble,” said André Doudak, president and CEO of the Jadco Group, which is developing about 1,100 condos in 10 different towers over several phases through its high-end Quintessence and Lumière projects.
“But we know the clientèle that we build for. We have much more land, we have much more green space (than the booming condo development sites around Laval’s Centropolis).”
Just as Montreal’s Griffintown project is transforming former industrial land into thousands of condos, the recent low-interestrate fuelled housing boom has accelerated the conversion of former agricultural land on this stretch of St. Elzéar into new homes. Meanwhile, thousands of additional units are under construction in Chomedey near Laval’s downtown core, and new métro stations just a few kilometres away.
But even as a softening housing market has fuelled concerns that the 8,000 residential units destined over several years for Griffintown might not all be sold, record levels of condo construction in Laval are raising similar questions for development in Quebec’s third-largest city.
Annual data compiled each December show the number of condo units under construction in Laval has soared by 170 per cent between 2008 and 2012, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. data show. What’s more, last month, out of the record-breaking 1,637 condo units under construction, 68 per cent were being built in the Chomedey district where the St. Elzéar projects are underway, the CMHC said.
“For sure, the condo market is in growth, but this is a very important number (of units) under construction,” said Bertrand Recher, a senior market analyst for CMHC. “There are already choices in the resale market, so construction in Laval should slow down like the rest of Greater Montreal this year.”
For 2012, Laval condo sales declined three per cent compared with 2011, even as the median price rose five per cent to $205,000, data from the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board show.
Housing starts have declined 22 per cent in Laval between the 2011 peak construction year and 2012, CMHC figures indicate. But with 1,148 units started in 2012, last year was still exceptionally strong for construction compared with the historical pace of building in the city.
St. Elzéar developers say a change in the federal mortgage rules, which sidelined first-time buyers and led to a decline in sales in Canada’s three largest real estate markets, hasn’t hurt their business.
“It really depends on the project,” said Carole Kieljan, sales director for Madeco Construction, which is building, or planning to build, a total of 700 condos and townhouses over three projects in the area. “That’s why Madeco is offering a reasonably priced project so the sales stay strong.”
Madeco’s Royal Chomedey project ranges in price from about $145,000 for a smaller sized condo, to about $400,000 for a townhouse, she said.
At the upper end of the condo price spectrum in Laval is Quintessence, which appeals to a more affluent buyer ready to spend between $350 to $550 per square foot for an apartment in the 350-unit project, where the average condo size ranges from 1,800 to 2,000 square feet.
Doudak said his vision for the area’s development stemmed from the city’s longexpected plans to widen St. Elzéar.
With Quintessence’s first tower completed and four more expected, he said his project is original and mature enough to progress even if there’s a slowdown in the market.
“I’m not really worried about it here. The market will not die,” he said. “If there are 50 per cent fewer clients, the remainder will go to the nicer projects, the more mature projects.”