“The planning process is very complicated,” developer Angelo Pasto says, but “it’s probably done to make sure buildings are protected.”
The walls of Westmount’s former St. Stephen’s Church, once vibrant with the ebb and flow of an Anglican congregation and later of unhoused people and the helping hands that served them meals, will soon come to life again.
Over the next 15 to 18 months, the red-brick building that has sat at an intersection of Westmount and downtown Montreal since 1903 is to be converted into high-end rental apartments.
The developer behind the project, Angelo Pasto, says it took a long time to tweak his plans to repurpose the deconsecrated church at the corner of Dorchester Blvd. and Atwater Ave. and the former rectory tucked behind it on Weredale Park St. to the satisfaction of Westmount’s urban planners and heritage advisers. The property has municipal heritage protection.
“The planning process is very complicated and very long,” Pasto said.
On the other hand, he added, “it’s probably done to make sure buildings are protected. The (construction) work is the easy part.”
The two existing buildings and a new low-rise building to be constructed on the property, overlooking Atwater, will house 17 apartments combined. Most of the 700- to 2,000-square-foot units will be two-bedroom and some will have mezzanines, Pasto said.
For Westmount, the St. Stephen’s project is its first conversion of a church into residences, but there’s pressure that it not be the last. The demerged municipality counts 13 places of worship, and at least one of them is the object of another formal request for conversion into housing.
Westmount Mayor Christina Smith confirmed the developer opened a file with the city for a project, but nothing has been decided.
Westmount passed a bylaw in 2019 allowing specific additional uses inside places of worship, such as an accountant office, a daycare or a club. The municipality also put a freeze on conversion of places of worship into housing on its territory. The freeze came after the application from Pasto’s company for St. Stephen’s was in, Smith said.
A long-term strategy for religious properties is needed, she said, adding that the challenge of how to repurpose under-utilized places of worship is an issue across the island of Montreal. But converting churches to housing is complicated and “not a straightforward path each time,” Smith said.
Still, “we have a housing crisis in this country that we need to address,” she said. “Where it makes sense to put housing, we have to look at it.”
The time it takes a developer to get municipal approval could be a deterrent, according to Pasto.
The construction permit for the St. Stephen’s project was issued at the end of October, seven years after his Stanford Properties Group purchased the property in 2017.
Pasto, whose company has done projects in historic buildings in and around Old Montreal, said his firm is used to working with heritage properties.
But St. Stephen’s “is my first church, and maybe my last,” he said, laughing. “Seven years. It’s long. It really is too long.”
“It’s been a very drawn-out process,” Smith acknowledged of the St. Stephen’s file, though she noted that city council approved the project in 2022. Thereafter, the municipality was waiting on the developer’s remaining construction documents, which it deposited in June of this year, she said. Still, there was “a lot of back and forth” with Westmount’s urban planning department and its planning advisory committee to finalize the project, she said.
“But they now have the documents in hand and we’re hoping that they finally move forward with this,” Smith said. “We want buildings to be utilized, and this one hasn’t been utilized for so long.”
Pasto describes his project as mainly restoration and preservation. For example, the front entrances of the former church won’t be altered and the slate roof won’t be tampered with. In fact, a missing cornice on the steeple will be remade like the original, he said. “We’re trying to restore the property with minimal intervention.”
That said, excavation is to begin this week to build an underground parking garage for the new building. The entrance and exit of the garage, which will provide one parking space for each unit in the project, will be from Atwater. The new building, with its nine apartment units, must be compatible in height, scale and architecture with the existing buildings.
As well, the five church windows facing Weredale Park will be transformed into doorways that will retain each window opening’s Gothic Revival pointed arch. The five units to be built inside the old church will look like row housing, Pasto explained. Three apartments are planned for the rectory.
Meanwhile, more changes are in the offing for the southeast sector of Westmount where St. Stephen’s is located.
“We want housing, we want people to live in this area, we want to reinvigorate the area,” Smith said.
Westmount resident Cary Leclaire, whose home faces St. Stephen’s, said he’s thrilled to see the project move ahead.
“The idea that it can be turned into something that’s useful again, and can be lived in and become alive again … is a great thing,” Leclaire said, adding he’s “looking forward to having neighbours.”
“Montreal has got a plethora of religious buildings all over the place. People will say, ‘Oh, it was a church.’ There’s this human tendency to lean toward ‘therefore it should become a cultural centre, it should become a theatre, it should become a library.’ Somehow people associate those ideals with a church, I guess. But in my opinion, it’s just as valid to have people living in it.”
