François Duplantie sits at the head of a massive table inside his opulent mansion on the private gated island once owned by singer Céline Dion. He's brooding over the future of the property.

Duplantie owns the 24,000-square-foot mansion in Laval, Quebec, as well as the entire heavily wooded 19-acre Gagnon Island, which is about 26 kilometres northwest of downtown Montreal. The island sits on the Mille Iles River, one of the waterways surrounding the Montreal area that leads to the Atlantic Ocean.

Duplantie has a dream of transforming the site by adding 660 condominium units and a 35-room hotel that can capture business from the stream of tourists, often from the United States, that pour into greater Montreal. The mansion would be converted into a reception hall or restaurant, according to his plan.

However, Duplantie's plans for the property hit a roadblock in the summer of 2020 after his rezoning change proposals met with objections from residents of the city of Laval, which has jurisdiction over the island. But Duplantie is persevering and still holds regular meetings with the heads of associations that opposed his plan and says he is willing to tinker with details of his project to win their approval.

Duplantie said developing the island would carry significant benefits, like helping with a housing shortage.

“All around the world countries are creating programs to promote density and to protect the environment. That’s how we must build to protect future generations,” Duplantie told CoStar News in an interview at the mansion.

The island has earned a place in the consciousness of Quebecers, who have followed Dion’s accomplishments. She was born into a family of 14 children in a home 30 kilometres down the same Mille Iles River in the town of Charlemagne.

But if Dion sang about the ornate mansion on the private island, it might be a bittersweet number, as the pop diva enjoyed happy moments at the property but also spent years trying to sell before parting with it at a massive discount in 2016.

Dion, 54, who has sold over 200 million records and is counted by some measures as the second-biggest selling female recording artist of all time behind only Madonna, purchased the island in 2000 with her late husband René Angélil for $7.8 million. The couple spent an estimated $20 million to $30 million rebuilding the existing greystone structure, saving only a couple of facades.

Dion purchased many of the houses on the cul-de-sac Ile Gagnon St. that leads up to the two sets of gates at the foot of the land bridge to the island. She then gave them as gifts to family members to allow them to live close by, according to Duplantie.

Dion and her family lived in the home from 2001 to 2007 but she was engaged to perform regularly in Las Vegas from 2003 to 2007, leaving her little time to spend in her home province. Dion and Angélil put the island property up for sale in 2012 with an asking price of $30 million.

At the time, Duplantie was a former Realtor in his early 30s who had settled into property development after launching a company that had built a number of homes, mostly in the same suburban area north of Montreal.

He made a bid on the island property in 2013 and signed a $25 million deal, conditional on receiving approval for his request for zoning changes that would allow a larger project to get built. He arranged financing from Olymbec, a Montreal company headed by his acquaintance Richard Stern.

But Duplantie’s zoning acceptance was not forthcoming and the massive mansion was still on the market in February 2015 when the house was damaged by flooding after a pipe burst in the attic, which was only spotted after one of Dion's family members looked in on the property.

The water caused massive damage, leading insurers to hand Dion and Angélil a $10 million insurance payment for repairs, according to Duplantie.

“Sometime after that I received a call from her people saying ‘Francois, Celine is not a renovator, her husband is sick, she’s willing to make you a deal to buy the property with no strings attached,'” said Duplantie.

Duplantie offered Dion and Angélil $10 million for the property as-is and the deal was struck. The couple walked away from the island home with a total of $20 million, $10 million from Duplantie and $10 million from her insurers.

Angélil died of cancer at the age of 73 in January 2016 in Nevada and Duplantie closed on his deal later that year. Duplantie personally undertook renovations that brought the property back to precisely how it looked prior to the flood, in a repair job that cost considerably less than the $10 million paid out by Dion’s insurance company, according to Duplantie.

By 2020, Duplantie was ready to unveil his building plan for the island in an effort to get a zoning change. He produced a 36-page marketing pamphlet with images of an eco-friendly project that would see 85% of the island remain covered with green space, including vegetation on the roofs.

“We wanted to create something historic, something attractive, something that would benefit the people,” Duplantie told CoStar News.

Duplantie notes that regional guidelines permit him to build up to six storeys on the island with 30 accommodations per hectare, according to rules issued by the Montreal Metropolitan Community, a group that coordinates and finances 82 municipalities, representing 4.1 million people in the Montreal area.

However, Laval authorities have the final say and Duplantie still needed their approval. The officials he met appeared positive toward his rezoning request, although they told him that he would need to build a second bridge to the island.

Duplantie then added a second multiresidential project to his zoning-change wish list, to be built nearby on property he owned on the mainland of Laval near Curé-Labelle and Ste. Rose. The second project aimed to help finance the bridge he was being ordered to build.

The plans came to a sudden halt, however, after locals gave both of Duplantie’s projects the thumbs-down in an informal poll in 2020, though the second project on the mainland attracted a slightly higher level of support.

One Laval city councilor tells CoStar News that the negative public reaction proved the death knell for the project and prevented the zoning change from advancing to a formal stage.

"The citizens were not called to vote. There were presentations by the developer and the public was invited by the developer and he withdrew the project when he saw that it did not receive approval from the people," Claude Larochelle, city councilor for the Fabreville district of Laval, told CoStar News. Larochelle was among the supporters of a failed initiative to turn 71% of the island into a public park.

Some locals even organized a protest against the proposed development of Ile Gagnon from kayaks in the river behind the island, as police came to the mansion to keep an eye on events during the protest. Duplantie says he counted 250 kayaks and other small watercraft expressing opposition to the proposal.

The municipality has since placed the island into its T1.2 Natural Zoning category as a protected area with ecological value but current zoning rules permit Duplantie to build about 15 single-family detached dwellings on the island, a small number because Laval zoning rules order a minimum lot size of 4,000 square metres on the property, much larger than the minimum 1,500-square-metre minimum sized lot in the rest of Laval.

Duplantie said he will make a decision sometime later this year on whether to build the smaller houses or continue to pursue approval for the larger project.

Meanwhile, Duplantie lives at the ornate home with its grand entrance, views of the river and marble floors with his wife and daughter and two dogs. He concedes that the home is a little large for his needs but says that it "has a great energy" he enjoys.

“It’s quite a property," he said. "It's built with taste. It was personally designed by Céline and René, so it’s really quite magnificent.”