The push across North America for more development near mass transit is playing out in a large parking lot of a Ford car dealership near the future Anjou metro station in East End Montreal.
The site is expected to become home to nearly 1,000 residential units in a real estate development led by Groupe HD along with investment partners Kastello Immobilier and Bourgie Financial.
The companies announced the project slated for the Ford site at 7000 Louis-H.-La Fontaine Blvd. and finalized the purchase of the 252,000-square-foot property earlier this week, paying $36 million, or $142 per square foot, according to CoStar data.
Planning officials across Canadian provinces and U.S. states have been working to encourage more residential development in areas where car use could be avoided, taking less stress off local roads and limiting air pollution.
A representative of Groupe HD said in an interview that the Ford dealership would likely be demolished to make way for the development, though details of the project remain undetermined. The developers are now awaiting approvals that could take a full year to obtain.
The site acquisition marks the start of the planning and development process, the companies said in a statement. The developers did not disclose renderings or specific plans for the site except to say they have a "shared vision of building inclusive, sustainable urban spaces."
Online public documents released by city officials last summer indicate that the borough of Anjou sought to change zoning in the area to allow for three new buildings on the site. One would be a 20-floor tower with 353 units, a second 20-floor structure with 375 units and a third standing 13 floors and containing 231 units.
The project falls into the transit-oriented development category since it is located 250 metres from the proposed Anjou metro station, one of five new stations planned on the Blue Line and slated to open in 2029.
The project is one of several residential real estate developments in the works that aim to add homes to the retail-rich area near the Galeries d'Anjou Shopping Centre. Others include a 241-unit residential project planned by First Capital Real Estate Investment Trust at the neighbouring retail Toys R Us property, also close to the future metro station.
The Anjou metro station will be the final stop on a six-kilometre extension of the Blue Line northeast of downtown Montreal. Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate wing of the CDPQ provincial public pension fund, gave up a section of the parking lot of its Galeries d’Anjou to allow for the station to be built in a deal struck in February 2023.
Groupe HD has become one of Montreal’s busiest developers in recent times, as the firm, co-led by Jean-Philippe Hébert and Thomas Dufour, also has ongoing projects with fellow Montreal developer Omnia in both East End and West End Montreal.
Kastellō Real Estate was launched by the Fortin family in 2018 and has invested in 20 projects and has 1,700 apartments in its portfolio, according to its website. The third partner, Bourgie Financial, is led by Pierre Bourgie of the Urgel Bourgie funeral home empire.