City buys Hutchison Plaza for social housing
The city has bought the Hutchison Plaza building across from Parc metro, with the intention of turning it into social housing. The building’s saga involved a new owner evicting a lot of small ethnic businesses and social assistance offices first, but under the circumstances, this is the best thing that could happen to the building.
The city is still waiting on funds to proceed with fulfilling its promises on social housing, but differences between Quebec and Ottawa are holding the money back.
Su 09:43 on 2020-09-10 Permalink
The Gazette also has an article on this acquisition https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/city-uses-new-pre-emptive-right-to-buy-park-ex-building-for-social-housing/wcm/d99fea05-ce19-4b15-8903-d126b4e531d7/
Apparently this preemptive right is being applied by our executive committe to a couple of hundred properties. Article quotes a Projet Montreal rep stating that the 1200 affordable housing units promised by Plante are 75% attained.
Tim 12:01 on 2020-09-10 Permalink
Unfortunately, I could not find any reference to what BSR group originally paid for that building to determine their profit. I always thought that the idea of luxury condos there was ludicrous.
I also do not understand why the city plans to immediately sell the building to a non-profit. They had better include some type of first right of refusal in the contract so that they can take it back in the event that the non-profit is unable to extract an appropriate level of government funding to make a go of it.
David54 16:19 on 2020-09-10 Permalink
This is one of the few cases where I say: forget about affordable housing.
This building had a lot of affordable office space, which is secretly vanishing, and which covid won’t bring back. But the city can!