City approves $60M contract for upgrades at racetrack
The city is spending nearly $60 million to renovate the paddocks at the Gilles Villeneuve racetrack.
On Wednesday, the executive committee approved a $59.9-million contract with Groupe Geyser to upgrade structures for the Formula One Grand Prix, including the paddocks and hospitality area.
Geyser was the lowest of five bidders who responded to a call for tenders on Dec. 14.
The project includes demolishing the existing paddocks and rebuilding them to meet the F1’s current requirements.
The price tag for the long-awaited renovations to the track in Parc Jean-Drapeau has jumped from about $30 million in 2015 to $48 million last year, to an estimated total of $76 million by next year, including the $59.9 million approved Wednesday.
But Mayor Valérie Plante told reporters on Wednesday that the work, to be completed by May 2019, is much more extensive than the renovations originally announced in 2015.
It includes installing pile foundations to minimize the impacts on cyclists and allow other activities to continue in the park during the Grand Prix. It also includes increasing the seating capacity in the boxes above the garages to 5,000 from the current 1,800.
“The Formula One is well established in Montrealers’ hearts, as well as for tourists,” Plante said.
But she added that she hopes for long-term agreements with the F1 organization and did not want to take part in negotiations with a knife to the throat.
“Today it’s not so much that we are going forward but rather that we’ve decided not to back up,” Luc Ferrandez, the member of the executive committee responsible for large parks, said at the meeting.
Ferrandez noted that the city has been in negotiations with the F1 authorities for several years and that previous mayor Denis Coderre had said the organization’s requirements for the track were too expensive.
However, the F1 was adamant that the facilities had to be upgraded, and “Montreal decided to move forward at that time,” Ferrandez said.
“The question we have to ask ourselves is: Is this an investment that corresponds to what F1 brings back to Montreal, and the answer is yes,” he said.
Montreal is among the four cities whose Grand Prix have the highest attendance and it is a major tourist draw, Ferrandez noted.
Fifty-two per cent of visitors to the Grand Prix are from outside Montreal, he added.
“The impacts have been measured. We’ve remeasured them again and it’s a decision that economically makes sense,” Ferrandez said.
“For all these reasons, it is out of the question today to back down on this investment that will continue to play a leading role in Montreal because of its impact on tourism and on the personality of the city,” he said.