LaSalle Borough Councillors accepted $566,990 to establish a park on Allard Street at their July borough meeting. The payment is linked to the upcoming construction of two towers in Quartier Angrignon on a triangular lot bordered by Newman, Irwin and Allard.
When completed, the two towers will form a “v” on the corner. Together, they are the first phase of the “EQ8 Cité Urbaine LaSalle” transit- and pedestrian-oriented project.
We checked for the best site for this project and Ville de LaSalle is the one,” says the general contractor for the project, Groupe Cholette’s president Michel Cholette. “In most boroughs, it’s a buyer’s market. LaSalle is an exception. The demand is higher than what’s available there.”
While the official ground-breaking took place in the spring, construction on the first 169-unit tower will begin next month. Eighty-nine of the units will consist of four-and-a-half room condos. The others will include three-and-a-half room units and 1,600 square-foot five-and-a-half room units. The project will cost $90 million to build.
Owners Armco Capital Inc. had to begin spending before the plans for EQ8 were even started. It cost more than $10 million to truck away contaminated soil from the 35,907.6 square metre lot, which used to house a steel manufacturing plant.
The decommissioning of former industrial sites is a priority for Montreal, and we are pleased to be able to contribute in our own way,” said Armco’s president Georges Armoyan.
As soon as the first 16-storey tower is sold, a second 15-storey tower will be built. Groupe Cholette had already sold about 50 of the units before groundbreaking through a consultation process that’s been occurring while the lot was undergoing decontamination.
We put up an ad on the corner of the street, and when people would phone us or contact us by email, we conducted a bit of a focus group,” said Stephane Chartrand, director of sales and international development at Groupe Cholette. “We’ve spoken to more than 200 people, and met with about a hundred of them. We’ve really listened.”
Chartrand says that the size of the units was very important to the people they interviewed, as were larger balconies. Some units even have very large terraces to satisfy demand. An indoor pool was less important to most of them and won’t be included.
Some of the people we spoke to have lived in LaSalle all their life and they want to move out of triplexes and duplexes. Others are from the south shore and they’re tired of crossing the Champlain Bridge.”
Cholette is working with St. Laurent-based architect Rabih Khazaka, who will be designing an impressive water wall to face the building. He’ll design based on the “EQ8” concept that stands for balancing eight elements to achieve equilibrium: urban and suburban lifestyles, the bubbling water of the St. Lawrence rapids and the smooth water of the Lachine Canal, Angrignon Park tranquility and Angrignon Mall shopping effervescence, and the fragility of glass with the strength of concrete.
The project isn’t registered for the LEEDs program, but there are environmental aspects to it, including a ratio of only one car per unit and an in-building car-sharing service run by LibrOto company (http://en.libroto.ca) president and founder Christian Assouad.
There will be parking spaces for buyers who choose to join the services—20 or 30 customers,” said Chartrand. “The Montreal-based company has a couple of cars out. It’s an hourly rate service. Access will be through the same key as for the building.”
Note: A version of this article appeared on page two of the Suburban City Edition on Wednesday, August 14, 2013.
