1750, rue Cedar - 4 étages (2021)

[jesseps]

CTV Montreal has learned that the McGill University Health Centre has admitted defeat and has shelved plans to expand the Montreal General Hospital, blaming Quebec’s health minister for a lack of support.

 

Last September, the MUHC received a stern rebuke from Montreal’s public consultation office for going ahead with the project without the permits required to transform 1750 Cedar St. into an outpatient clinic for the adjacent hospital.

 

In the months since, the MUHC had lobbied the municipal and provincial governments to allow it to go forward with its plan to connect the half-built condo tower to the hospital.

 

The lobbying was complicated by the location of the project, as the hospital was seeking to rezone a lot adjacent to Mount Royal from a residential area to institutional space. Citizen’s groups like Heritage Montreal had opposed the rezoning, calling it an attack on the city’s green space.

 

In a document made available to CTV Montreal, interim director general of the MUHC Normand Rinfret made it clear he has backtracked and that the hospital will not expand beyond its current physical limits.

 

“We must also acknowledge that we failed to secure the support of our neighbours, our elected representatives and other Montrealers for our plans,” wrote Rinfret. “There are strong arguments from a public policy and a healthcare perspective to incorporate 1750 Cedar […] into the MGH.”

 

While the majority of the MUHC’s operations are being transferred to the superhospital being built in the Glen Yard at the edge of Notre-Dame-des-Grace, the General Hospital will remain as the group’s flagship hospital in downtown Montreal.

 

The site at 1750 Cedar St. was a large part of the MUHC’s plan to invest in the hospital and upgrade its offerings to the local community.

 

With an expected price tag of $30 million, the building’s acquisition was also controversial, having been purchased from businessman Vincent Chiara by one of the MUHC’s not-for profit affiliates, Syscor.

 

Chiara had purchased the property for $3.6 million in 2007, with plans to build a 64-unit condo complex. MUHC officials have steadfastly refused to reveal how much Chiara was paid for the site.

 

Without 1750 Cedar St., the MUHC will investigate alternative plans to expand the hospital. The hospital will now put the land and concrete shell at 1750 Cedar St. on the market. The property will remain zoned as a residential area.

 

Read more: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/muhc-admits-defeat-abandons-plan-to-expand-montreal-general-1.892799#ixzz21fj15vKm

 

 

All I can say is, if the locals dislike the hospital expanding. They should go to another hospital if something happens.

[monctezuma]

Avec l'annulation du projet, nous avons maintenant un nouveau petit projet à suivre.

[WestAust]

Si j'était le MUHC je laisserais tomber à l'abandon la charpente déjà ammorcée! Si c'est une question de protection du territoire de la montagne, le "mal" est déjà fait, aussi bien lui trouver un usage respectable et surtout dans le cas proposé par le General, pour le bien public! N'est-ce pas ce dont les amis de la montagne et heritage montreal se vantent de vouloir protéger, le bien commun!

[denpanosekai]

2 years later...

 

Le CUSM se retire du 1750, avenue Cedar

 

Le Centre universitaire de santé McGill (CUSM) a annoncé mercredi par voie de communiqué la mise en vente du terrain du 1750, avenue Cedar sur lequel il comptait agrandir l’Hôpital général de Montréal.

 

Héritage Montréal, qui souhaite le maintien de la vocation résidentielle de ce terrain, se réjouit de cette nouvelle qui constitue un premier pas dans la bonne direction, selon eux. L’organisme a rapporté la nouvelle sur Twitter hier, qualifiant cette structure à l’abandon d’«épave de béton».

[nephersir7]

MUHC loses $27 million on ill-fated Cedar Ave. project

 

Three years after abandoning plans to build an unauthorized medical complex on Cedar Ave., the McGill University Health Centre has finally extricated itself from a legal quagmire — at a loss of $27 million, the Montreal Gazette has learned.

 

The MUHC’s withdrawal from 1750 Cedar — an unfinished four-storey concrete structure across from Mount Royal which locals have bemoaned as an eyesore — means that developer Vincent Chiara is now free to resume a condominium or apartment project on the site.

 

“This is a sad ending to a sad story for both of us, for both parties,” Chiara told the Montreal Gazette on Tuesday.

 

“I think this project was misunderstood from Day 1 … I imagine the (Montreal General) hospital still has a need for space, and if everyone would have understood the project, we would have patients in there today.”

 

Both the Quebec government and the city of Montreal cancelled the project in 2011 after discovering that the MUHC — under Arthur Porter, its executive director at the time — never obtained the necessary authorization from the Health Department. The city also determined that Porter, who died on June 30, violated the terms of a 2008 Mount Royal preservation pact that he signed with Mayor Gérald Tremblay.

 

A year later, Normand Rinfret, who succeeded Porter as head of the hospital network, announced that the MUHC was withdrawing from 1750 Cedar. For the next three years, both the MUHC and Chiara haggled over legal matters and compensation.

 

(In a 2009 interview with the Montreal Gazette, Porter said he “coveted” the underground parking spots available at 1750 Cedar and did not discuss the medical aspects of the project, which internal documents estimated would have cost $78.8 million.)

 

Michel Bureau, a government monitor who was appointed by the Health Department to help the MUHC get its operating finances back on track, estimated in a report this year that the loss for pulling out of the project amounts to $27 million.

 

The MUHC, Bureau wrote, “has assumed losses without recourse to its operating budget. This agreement (with Chiara) has given rise to a financial loss for the MUHC but (the deal) has reduced considerably the long-term financial risks for the MUHC.

 

“The board of directors of the MUHC has pledged to reimburse the cost of the Cedar file ($27 million) without recourse to its budget,” Bureau added in the report, dated April 24, but made available only two weeks ago on the MUHC’s website. The report has since been removed from the ministry’s website and the link to it removed from the MUHC’s website.

 

“The funding sources (for the loss) have been agreed upon to the satisfaction of the monitor,” Bureau concluded in his report, without specifying those exact sources.

 

Elsewhere in the report, Bureau wrote that by September 2015, the MUHC must “obtain a reimbursement of $27 million” relative to 1750 Cedar.

 

MUHC officials were unable to clarify the reimbursement, or from where the hospital network obtained the $27 million. The Bureau report noted that the loss was reflected in the MUHC’s 2012-2013 financial statements, but there is no specific mention of 1750 Cedar in those statements other than an accumulated deficit of $72.5 million.

 

“Dr. Michel Bureau’s final report makes a number of recommendations, one of which is ‘obtaining a reimbursement of $27 (million) related to 1750 Cedar Ave.’ ” MUHC spokesperson Ian Popple said in a statement Tuesday. “The MUHC will be following up on Dr. Bureau’s very positive report with the (health department) in the coming months.”

 

Asked about whether Chiara knew anything about the MUHC reimbursement of $27 million, the businessman responded: “Absolutely not. A reimbursement from who?”

 

(An earlier government auditor’s report estimated that the MUHC might lose as much as $42 million to extricate itself from the 1750 Cedar deal.)

 

Chiara contends he has lost “millions of dollars” from the ill-fated project.

 

“I don’t know what their loss is. I know what my loss is,” Chiara said, “considering that we had a $17-million parcel of land that’s been immobilized for the past eight years that we’ve been paying interest and taxes on, amongst other things. We saw a residential market go from a peak to a valley since then, and we’re not even ready to go. (It) will be 10 years before this project gets off the ground (from when it was first proposed).”

 

Property records show that one of Chiara’s companies acquired the property in 2007 for $3.6 million. Initially, Chiara sought to build a 64-unit apartment complex, but then decided to lease the land to the MUHC for a complex of clinics.

 

Chiara said he now plans to resume the residential project, which he hopes to complete at the earliest in 2017. The building would house 70 to 100 smaller units.

 

“We’re not going to modify the look of the initial project because we don’t want to go through the whole process again,” he added. “What the neighbourhood saw and what the different groups that approved the project saw, they are going to get. We’re not going to change the colour of the brick, the windows, the size, the height and all that. The square footage is going to be the same. We may just tweak the amount of units inside but as far as square footage goes, that will stay the same.”

 

http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/muhc-loses-27-million-on-ill-fated-cedar-ave-project

[denpanosekai]

We’re not going to modify the look of the initial project because we don’t want to go through the whole process again,” he added. “What the neighbourhood saw and what the different groups that approved the project saw, they are going to get. We’re not going to change the colour of the brick, the windows, the size, the height and all that. The square footage is going to be the same. We may just tweak the amount of units inside but as far as square footage goes, that will stay the same.

 

can anyone dig out the approved plans?

[Formica]

can anyone dig out the approved plans?

 

Too short of time to download the material, but see link below around slide 41 to 46....

 

http://www.slideshare.net/ocpm/cusm-prsentation-du-promoteur-6-juin-2011

[denpanosekai]

Too short of time to download the material, but see link below around slide 41 to 46....

 

http://www.slideshare.net/ocpm/cusm-prsentation-du-promoteur-6-juin-2011

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

[mcgill101]

It looks like construction has resumed at this site. There have been crews working there for at least the last week.

[UrbMtl]

le1750cedar.com