Hull tower project’s fate hinges on heritage vote
Battle lines are drawn over face of historic Museum District
While Gatineau city council is officially voting on a heritage designation for its downtown Museum District on Tuesday, it’s also a referendum of sorts on the future of developer Brigil’s most controversial project to date.
If council decides to pass a bylaw designating the area near the Canadian Museum of History a heritage district, there’s essentially no way the $400-million, 35- and 55-storey mixed-use Place des Peuples development could go ahead in the neighbourhood, according to city councillor for the area, Cédric Tessier.
“I don’t know what the vote will be. It will be close. There are people like me that are advocates for the heritage district ... but there are people who are advocates for Brigil,” he said.
Indeed, the intense debate that’s divided Gatinois since the Place des Peuples project was unveiled has seen many detract its proposed incursion onto rue Laurier in historical heart of Gatineau. As historian Michelle Guitard pointed out, many of the district’s 50-odd buildings were constructed in the late 19th century and provide a tangible glimpse into the city’s architectural, institutional and social history.
“You cannot build a highrise and not destroy the environment,” she said Friday.
But others have celebrated Brigil’s project as a visionary step toward much-needed revitalization of a core National Capital Region neighbourhood and, by extension, Gatineau writ large. While more than 1.2 million people visit the Canadian Museum of History every year, “nobody goes across the street, nobody goes in that section of town, nobody visits,” said Yves Ducharme, special adviser for Brigil.
Since the locally founded Ottawa-Gatineau builder unveiled its Place des Peuples project in the spring of 2015, its lofty ambitions for the condo, hotel and commercial tower complex have encountered civic and political opposition.
The scope of the proposal presents such a drastic departure from the neighbourhood’s three-storey zoning that the mayor of Gatineau mulled a referendum on the project within months of its announcement (it didn’t come to fruition).
The massive project would sit right across the street from the Canadian Museum of History and was designed, in part, by the museum’s architect, Douglas Cardinal.
With a 360-degree observation deck in its higher tower and an indoor public space, Place des Peuples and its curved glass towers would be “a unifying project,” said Brigil president Gilles Desjardins, “which will not only serve as the cornerstone of the downtown area’s revival, but also represents an extraordinary architectural attraction offering great potential and diversity for the people of Gatineau and visitors alike.”
More than 2,000 people have signed a Change.org petition in support of the project, with comments praising its landmark architecture and potential to generate economic and social activity. Brigil has estimated that the project could help to generate 1,000 new jobs in the area. Meanwhile, 1,300 people “like” a Facebook page called Protect the Museum Quarter.
In the spring of 2016, a group of area residents and heritage advocates asked the city to give the neighbourhood a heritage designation, Tessier said.
In May, Tessier tabled a motion to kick-start the official heritage designation process on which council will vote Tuesday.
If passed, the designation will offer several blocks around the museum significant protection against development, and effectively negate any chance Brigil has to move forward with its tower complex, he explained.
It’s an action praised by heritage experts like Guitard, whose appreciation for the Museum District prompted her to write a book detailing the history of each building in the area when she learned about the Place des Peuples proposal.
“Brigil can build its towers anywhere else, but not there. It’s nonsense,” she said, noting that if the city allows for this particular development, the years its residents have spent championing zoning restrictions and heritage preservation will be for naught. “It’s almost like saying, ‘ Well, your history has no importance.’
“It means that the city then is not ruled by the citizens, it’s ruled by the entrepreneurs.”
In a high-profile open letter published recently in Le Droit, worldrenowned Canadian architect Phyllis Lambert and Quebec senator Serge Joyal denounced Brigil’s towers as “an urban disaster.”
The goal, Joyal explained in an interview last week, was to warn councillors to “think twice before rushing to take that decision that would change forever the fabric of the city.”
Allowing for a highrise like Place des Peuples would trigger rampant real-estate speculation in the surrounding neighbourhood, Joyal said. If council permits one developer to demolish houses and build up, on what grounds could it deny the same to others down the road?
“The whole neighbourhood would disappear,” he predicted. Brigil sees things differently. In fact, the developer supports a heritage designation for the Museum District, and has told the city as much, as long as it’s “flexible and modern,” Ducharme explained.
Rather than a blanket application for all buildings within the area’s borders, regardless of an individual structure’s heritage value, Brigil’s proposed designation would evaluate each building ’s history and determine acceptable use on that basis.
Height restrictions for new buildings would vary street to street, and allow Place des Peuples to come into being, Ducharme said. The money the complex would generate for the city — an estimated $8 million annually in taxes — would even provide for heritage preservation and restoration in the area.
As the law stands, such a “flexible” designation doesn’t exist, Tessier said. “I think it’s a marketing move.”
So council will vote Tuesday on the traditional kind of heritage designation for the Museum District. Six councillors and the mayor have announced they will vote in favour, four have said they will oppose it, and eight have yet to declare their positions, according to Tessier.
Asked if Brigil would still build in the Museum District on a much smaller scale — as could be permitted under certain conditions — if the designation passes, Ducharme answered with a vehement “no.”
“We will just wait because it won’t stand the test of time. That designation is badly written, and it is a bylaw that addresses mostly the designation of a small village but not a section of a downtown core.”