Group made up of elected politicians urges both levels of government not to fund development in the area until Plante administration commits to extension.
A group of elected officials is urging the federal and provincial governments to force the city’s hand so it respects a promise to connect two parts of Cavendish Blvd. in Montreal’s West End.
Called the Cavendish Coalition, the group — comprised of three MPs, four MNAs, four mayors and two city councillors — penned a letter to federal Housing and Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser urging him not to fund any housing projects at the Namur-Hippodrome district unless there is a commitment to building the Cavendish extension.
“It has long been recognized that the Cavendish-Cavendish link should be built as a corridor of sustainable mobility that would provide many advantages for the eco-quartier Namur-Hippodrome (QNH) as well as the surrounding area of the island of Montreal. This project would provide a much-needed north-south axis connecting employment and commercial centres in St-Laurent and T.M.R. with residents and businesses through Côte-St-Luc, C.D.N./N.D.G. all the way to Lachine and LaSalle in the Sud-Ouest,” the letter to Fraser stated.
In the Montreal region’s planning documents for decades, there was finally some momentum on the project to link the end of Cavendish Blvd. in Côte-St-Luc to the point where it ends in the St-Laurent borough by linking both ends of the road to Royalmount Ave. A notice of project was sent to the province’s Bureau d’audiences publique sur l’environnement in 2022, and environmental impact studies were supposed to be ordered last year in order to proceed with public consultation.
The mayors of Côte-St-Luc and Town of Mount Royal see Cavendish as key to accessing the Namur métro station and planned developments like Royalmount, the transformation of Décarie Square and the Côte-St-Luc shopping centre, as well as relieving congestion or at least providing motorists an alternative to the Décarie Expressway. It’s also seen as a key to accessing the St-Laurent industrial park.
The group says the city’s Hippodrome development plan relies heavily on hundreds of millions in aid from the provincial and federal governments, as it will cost an estimated $1.4 billion just to build the roads and sewers. So far, no levels of government have committed to support the project.
They are also urging the provincial government enforce the agreement in which the province gave the land that formerly housed a horse-racing track to the city at no cost in 2018. The deal had two conditions: that a housing development be built on the site and that the Cavendish extension be built.
The group is also calling on the province not to fund any development in the neighbourhood without the realization of the Cavendish project. D’Arcy-McGee MNA Elisabeth Prass plans to table a petition with those demands at the National Assembly when it resumes sitting in the fall.
The Cavendish Coalition is made up of:
- St-Laurent MP Emmanuella Lambropoulos (Liberal)
- Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount MP Anna Gainey (Liberal)
- Mount-Royal MP Anthony Housefather (Liberal)
- Notre-Dame-de-Grâce MNA Desirée McGraw (Liberal)
- D’Arcy-McGee MNA Elisabeth Prass (Liberal)
- St-Laurent MNA Marwah Rizqy (Liberal)
- Mont-Royal—Outremont MNA Michelle Setlakwe (Liberal)
- Côte-St-Luc Mayor Mitchell Brownstein
- St-Laurent borough Mayor Alan DeSousa (Ensemble Montréal)
- Hampstead Mayor Jeremy Levi
- Town of Mount Royal Mayor Peter Malouf
- Côte-St-Luc city councillor Dida Berku
- Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce city councillor Sonny Moroz (Ensemble Montréal)