When Premier Francois Legault pressed the pause button on non-essential businesses on Monday for a at least a three-week period because of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the construction industry was among the casualties.
For District 2 in Côte Saint-Luc this means that all work stops on the second tower of the Equinoxe on Marc Chagall Avenue as well as Le Montefiore on Mackle Road.
Work on the Equinoxe was already well behind schedule. Originally they had planned for a July 1 completion. When I last spoke to officials there, they pushed the date back to October 1 to deliver the final product. If crews are allowed to return to work on April 13 perhaps they can finish up by November or December. Partial occupancy is still the goal for July. They have just started to market this tower and sign leases.
The fact that July 1 was not going to happen regrettably means that the former greenspace on Marc Chagall must remain as a parking lot/storage space for another summer. The developers must return that to greenspace when the work is done. We were caught between a rock and a hard place here, with insufficient parking spaces on the street for all of the workers and many of their building materials.
Le Montefiore, like the Equinoxe, will be an upscale residential rental building. The transformation of the former seniors residence was supposed to be ready last fall, but unforeseen issues with the brickwork necessitated some major work on the structure. They have also converted the former first floor dining hall to an additional indoor lot. They are just embarking upon a marketing campaign for leases and a late spring opening is still likely.
I wish all of my constituents well as we try to cope with this nightmare situation. Your council is meeting six days a week by video conference and keeping an extremely close eye on the goings on in our city. Today I even took a walkabout in the district and carefully keeping six feet away from constituents who approached me to talk.
