Members of the business community added their voices to the call to extend Cavendish Blvd.
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A group of developers has joined the call for the Plante administration to move forward on the long-delayed Cavendish extension.
Joining the mayors of Côte-St-Luc, Town of Mount Royal and the borough of St-Laurent, roughly 20 companies have so far lent their support to a declaration calling on the city to resume its original timeline for the extension of Cavendish Blvd. in Côte-St-Luc to Cavendish Blvd. in St-Laurent, meeting at Royalmount Ave. in Town of Mount Royal. Among the companies in support are the CAE flight simulator company in St-Laurent.
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The project has been on pause since 2023 when the city elected not to award the necessary studies to evaluate the project’s impact on the environment — a vital step before public hearings can begin. Since that time, the city has been mum on when or even if it will award the studies.
Claude Marcotte, the executive vice president of Carbonleo, which is building a megamall on Royalmount, said his project can go ahead without the extension of Cavendish. However, adding another north-south artery would greatly help traffic flow.
“Since we decided to go ahead with the project, we knew the two main things we needed was the skylink to the De La Savane métro station and the enlargement of Côte-de-Liesse Rd., which we did; we spent about $100 million,” Marcotte said in a virtual news conference. “So we did our part.”
He added the extension, likely to cost about $200 million, is also key to the city’s plans to add 20,000 housing units in the Namur—Hippodrome sector.
“It’s a huge project, and it’s a personal opinion that Cavendish is quite important if it’s not essential for the development the Plante administration is proposing,” he said.
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The congestion at Décarie and Jean-Talon is hurting the area’s economy and it will hurt any chances to further develop the area, said Sam Scalia, the founder of the construction company Devmont, which is building the Westbury development of condos, hotels and commercial units near Décarie Blvd. and Vézina St. in the Snowdon sector.
“My opinion is that if you want to develop that area, it is presently landlocked, so the solution would be the extension of Cavendish to Royalmount,” Scalia said. “We have a beautiful opportunity to develop a Montreal midtown. It would be a key element in unlocking this entire area, and I’ve been saying this for many years.”
Alan DeSousa, the mayor of St-Laurent, added that the Cavendish extension would also be key to allowing thousands of workers to have better access to their workplaces in St-Laurent and Town of Mount Royal’s industrial sectors, without having to clog up the Décarie Expressway.
“Cavendish is not mainly an autoroute,” DeSousa said. “It’s a complete plan that includes a bike path, a tramway and cars. That’s why we think it’s going ahead to deal with these issues for the whole area, not just the Hippodrome, but the whole West End that would be well served by it.”
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Côte-St-Luc mayor Mitchell Brownstein added that Cavendish is planned as a mobility corridor, not to add more cars to the congested area, but to alleviate congestion and promote public transit, as it would have a tramway that would link to the Namur métro station.
Reached for comment on Friday, Catherine Cadotte, a spokesperson for Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, did not answer whether there are any plans to award the environmental impact studies for the Cavendish project.
Instead, Cadotte said the city is prioritizing an extension of Jean-Talon St. in the sector towards the area designated for Cavendish Blvd.
“By the fall, a study on mobility will be done on a renewed project that will include a tramway, in the context of accelerating the development of the Namur—Hippodrome neighbourhood,” Cadotte wrote in a text message. “The result of these studies will allow us to identify the environmental studies needed.”
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