An ongoing 14-year effort to develop housing on a part of the massive former Blue Bonnets racetrack site in the heart of Montreal has again failed to get out of the gates after the city didn't receive any bids to build homes on a part of the property.
Montreal called for bids in October in a effort to sell a 45,000-square-foot section of land for $10 million on the condition the developer build 60% affordable housing, a category of housing overseen by the city’s OMHM housing authority that offers rents below market price.
Rules of the bidding process would have required the new owner keep those units affordable for 30 years or else face hefty fines. The buyer would have had to comply with many other restrictions in order to fill a vision for the property that Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante describes as an eco-neighbourhood concept. The potential developer, for example, would not be allowed to build outdoor parking spaces and would have to devote a significant percentage of indoor parking spaces to car-sharing vehicles.
Some critics are saying Plante placed too many restrictions on the sale.
"The Blue Bonnets redevelopment plan exemplifies just how hard it is to get something built with this municipal administration," Célia Pinto Moreira, a public policy analyst at the Montreal Economic Institute, a local think tank that champions conservative economic policies, told CoStar News in an email. "City Hall needs to acknowledge the role it has played in the current high cost of housing and stop putting up so many obstacles to development."
Housing Needed
Montreal municipal authorities have coveted the Blue Bonnets site as a future source of new housing from even before the provincial government closed the racetrack in 2009. The property measures about the size of 60 football fields, is located near the Namur metro station and requires no decontamination measures. The land sits near the Decarie Expressway and is adjacent to many retail outlets, including the Walmart at 5400 Jean Talon St. W.
However, the only building done on the site this century took place in 2009 when Irish rock band U2 assembled a temporary stage, lights and seating to accommodate 162,000 fans over a pair of performances.
In 2017, the province ceded the property to the city of Montreal on condition that Montreal sell the site to developers within five years and share profits on the sale.
Developing the property would require hundreds of millions of dollars to create roads, sewers and other infrastructure needs. The city earmarked $156.6 million for the project in its latest budget but has thus far shared no vision for the future lay of the land. The city has promised a blueprint of the property in a master plan expected to come out later this year.
Montreal put out a separate call for tenders on a different section of the Blue Bonnets property in September 2022, seeking a developer to build 200 affordable housing units for $4.5 million, including an eight-storey building. The city is reportedly evaluating bids on that deal but did not indicate how many offers it received in that process.