Save the Franciscan Garden

Let's save the Franciscans' Garden

Help us save the nice green space known as the Franciscans’ Domain!

This domain is located at 2040 Boul. René-Lévesque West, on the South side, between du Fort and Sussex streets, practically at the entrance of the Ville-Marie Expressway.

Three years ago, the Franciscan church burned down and the monastery was destroyed shortly after. There are still two patrimonial houses on the site, the Maison Judah and the Maison Masson.

The rest of the site has become a green space with wild flowers and young trees that have put down roots.

This domain overhangs the expressway and the railroad tracks. In the back of this domain and overlooking the autoroute, there is a small wood with many trees that are more than 100 years old. 

This neighbourhood is known as a "quartier à critères" or a neighbourhood where criteria have to be maintained by the property owners. It is called the Shaughnessy Village and consists mostly of victorian houses of 3 or 4 floors, generally stone. It is part of Ville-Marie, a neighbourhood that includes the apartment buildings on de Maisonneuve and Sherbrooke and which is the most populous in Canada with the least green space. The norm is 4 hectares per 1,000 person. We have less than 2!

A developer wants to build 2 towers of 20 floors of de luxe condos on the site and the City seems ready to give it it's OK by changing the regulations and throwing away the criteria of the neighbourhood!

As a recent study showed, Ville-Marie is already a very intense "heat island". The best way to reduce these islands of heat is to have more green space (and not one or two trees on a sidewalk).

Furthermore, as the site on the St-Jacques escarpment, it would be necessary to do piling for months to stabilize such a building, which could damage the properties around it and the noise would be atrocious for all the neighbours.

200 de luxe condos = 200 + cars, without counting the pollution and circulation problems caused by this construction and 200+ cars. Parking is already an issue around that neighbourhood.

This petition wants to convince the City to refuse this permit and to keep the space as a green space in an area that has an extreme deficiency of green spaces.

To protect those two patrimonial houses

To protect the appearance and criteria of Shaughnessy Village

To protect the environment and the quality of life of citizens and people who work or visit the area

To have more green space

To reduce heat islands

To protect the quality of the air

To keep a human dimension to the neighbourhood

Sign this petition, either on line or at the offices of Éco-Quartier: 1240 Saint-Marc, Montréal, H3H 2E5, Téléphone : 514-933-1069 (http://eco-quartierpm.org) or at  

Interaction Peter McGill, at the 3rd floor of the Atwater Library, 1200 Atwater, Westmount,  Québec (http://petermcgill.org/)

Additional info on the St-Jacques Escarpment : https://app.box.com/s/xiopw61ch5wf1etrbpi9