ville-marie Hôtel Mount Stephen - 12 étages

[budgebandit]

Unbelievable

[KOOL]

Ce projet hideux se transforme carrément en histoire d'horreur.

[yarabundi]

Ça prend de plus en plus des airs de farce macabre !!!

[Rocco]

Je ne serais pas surpris qu'ils la jettent à terre en bout de ligne. Tidan: un nom à retenir.

[orages lointains]

prediction: it will be demolished.

[yarabundi]

Si jamais le Mount Stephen devait être démoli j'aimerais bien que la Ville ait le courage d'ordonner soit la démolition de l'hôtel, soit son expropriation.

[Rocco]

C'est un projet bâclé depuis le début. Regardez juste la portion nouvellement construite.. Ça crie 'cheap' avec ses panneaux de faux béton bon marché et sa tôle en aluminium drabe.. 3 côtés totalement opaques.. Il était évident que le promoteur voulait faire vite et pas cher.. sans aucune considération patrimoniale. Ça l'a rattrapé.. Life's a bitch.

[Condopop]

C'est tellement laid et triste ce projet...C'est un crime contre le patrimoine de Montréal, très d'accord pour que la ville ordonne soit la démolition de l'hôtel ou son expropriation.

[ScarletCoral]

more digging into this story!

 

via The Gazette :

 

 

Culture officials initially opposed hotel tower for Mount Stephen Club: documents

 

Marian Scott, Montreal Gazette

 

Published on: May 10, 2016 | Last Updated: May 10, 2016 7:57 AM EDT

 

Heritage experts for the Quebec government were deeply divided over a proposed hotel tower behind the Mount Stephen Club, documents obtained under a freedom of information request reveal.

 

The documents show the ministry of Culture initially rejected the project in 2007, judging the highrise annex would detract from the heritage value of the 136-year-old mansion at 1400 Drummond St.

 

They detail five years of negotiations with developer Tidan Inc., during which the ministry rejected two versions of the project and approved two. The final project got the go-ahead in May 2012 and construction started in the fall of 2013.

 

The documents — 702 pages of emails, reports, permits and photos dating back to 2001 — show experts in the Culture ministry and at Parks Canada opposed the hotel project when it was first submitted in 2007, saying it “negatively affects the monument’s heritage value and its appearance as an isolated and monumental building.”

 

In contrast, the Commission des biens culturels du Québec, an advisory body, favoured it, saying the conversion to an 80-room hotel “can and should set an example of harmonious integration.”

 

The documents also reveal that on March 1, 2012, then-assistant deputy minister of Culture France Dionne sent a query to ministry officials in Montreal asking why they had rejected the project six weeks earlier.

 

“I would like to discuss this or for us to visit the site during our visit (to Montreal),” Dionne wrote to ministry official René Bouchard.

 

Two months later, the final version of the project was approved.

 

While officials debated behind closed doors, the public was kept in the dark about the plans to redevelop the historic landmark.

 

No public consultation was ever held on the proposed hotel and underground parking lot even though the mansion and its grounds are a protected heritage site. The Ville-Marie borough is not obliged to hold consultations when a project does not contravene zoning bylaws.

 

Built from 1880-83 for George Stephen, first president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the mansion, in the Italian Renaissance style, bears witness to Montreal’s Gilded Age, when the city was Canada’s industrial and transportation hub.

 

From 1926 to 2011, it operated as a private club, which accounts for its remarkable state of preservation, while so many other mansions in the city’s affluent Square Mile have been gutted or demolished.

 

Its sumptuous interior features walls and ceilings panelled in precious woods, fixtures plated in 22-carat gold and 18th century stained-glass windows from Italy.

 

The federal government designated it a National Historic Site of Canada in 1971.

 

In 1975, Quebec classified the mansion as a heritage site, meaning that its interior and exterior are protected under the province’s Cultural Heritage Act from alteration or demolition without the minister’s authorization.

 

In 1978, Quebec extended the site’s heritage protection to include the entire area within a 152-metre (500 foot) radius of the building.

 

Recommended rejection of hotel project

 

The documents reveal that ministry officials recommended rejection of the hotel project when Tidan first proposed it, the year after it bought the building from the non-profit private club.

 

In a memo to the Deputy Minister of Culture on Aug. 28, 2007, heritage consultant André Chouinard said the project violated “the established principles for the preservation and reuse of classified historic monuments,” which call for the preservation of a heritage building’s surroundings when they are key to its character.

 

The reason the area around the mansion was classified in 1978 was “to preserve its heritage value,” Chouinard noted.

 

“The heritage value of the Mount Stephen Club building lies partly in the fact that it typifies a certain type of building, the urban bourgeois residence,” he wrote.

 

An important characteristic of the grand villas of the Square Mile, where Canada’s industrial elite lived in the late 19th century, was their landscaped gardens, behind wrought-iron fences.

 

Over the years, the mansion’s stately grounds, once the setting for elegant garden parties, have shrunk as higher buildings have hemmed it in on all sides.

 

To remove the last vestiges of those grounds and add to the tall buildings crowding in on the two-storey mansion would detract from its value, Chouinard argued.

 

‘Qualities not hidden, damaged, destroyed’

 

“Ideally, additions to classified monuments are not desirable, because it’s important to maintain the building’s original dimensions. However, if an addition is necessary, ‘It must be designed and built in such a way that the heritage value of the site is not radically altered and that its characteristic qualities are not hidden, damaged or destroyed,’” Chouinard wrote, quoting from Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada.

 

In an independent report on Aug. 23, 2007, a committee of experts for Parks Canada reached the same conclusion.

 

The project would detract from “the architectural richness of the heritage mansion by eliminating the space of the yard,” says the report, which Parks Canada provided to the Montreal Gazette.

 

It criticized the “intensification of high buildings surrounding the NHS (National Historic Site), and this even though this site has provincial protection (as a classified historic site).”

 

However, the Commission des biens culturels du Québec (now called the Conseil du patrimoine culturel du Québec), said that since the building’s original setting had already changed beyond recognition, the project should be accepted.

 

Following Chouinard’s memo, the ministry rejected the project on Nov. 9, 2007.

 

Ministry approved scaled-down version

 

However, in February 2008, the ministry approved a scaled-down version. It reduced the tower’s height to 10 storeys from 15 and confined it to the area behind the Mount Stephen Club instead of including a side wing.

 

However, Tidan did not go ahead with the project at that time.

 

In 2009, the developer learned that municipal zoning for the site allowed a higher building and submitted a third proposal that added about 30 feet to the tower. It was rejected in January 2012.

 

The final version was approved in principle in May 2012, with the final plans getting the green light in April 2013, and construction began that fall.

 

When it approved the project, the ministry praised the design of the hotel annex, comparing it to wallpaper that would showcase the mansion.

 

The final design addresses some of the criticisms experts raised in 2007, since it is smaller than Tidan’s original version, at 11 storeys, and is partly hidden by the mansion.

 

However, it adds to the high structures hemming in the historic landmark, as government experts warned. The cement-board annex has been criticized as an eyesore for its facade dotted by small windows of different sizes and three blind walls.

 

But its esthetic impact is the least of the problems facing the hotel project.

 

In recent weeks, workers have been dismantling part of the mansion’s stone facade, which cracked and became unstable during construction of the tower and underground garage.

 

Stones must be saved, numbered

 

The ministry and the Ville-Marie borough have ordered Tidan to save and number the stones and rebuild the wall as it was before once the foundation problems have been addressed.

 

Much of the building’s interior must also be removed and reconstructed, including wood-panelled walls, coffered ceilings and a marble entrance hall.

 

The documents also reveal the ministry had known for at least 15 years that the mansion was at risk of structural damage from nearby construction, yet did not call for special precautions to protect the fragile landmark.

 

The ministry is also suing Tidan owners Mike Yuval and Jack Sofer and their numbered company, 9166-9093 Québec Inc., for unauthorized alterations, including the demolition of three chimneys, removal of a stone and wrought-iron fence and porch railing, covering up of a stone wall with cement-panel siding, construction of a cinder-block wall in the attic and of a structure on the roof to hide a generator.

 

mscott@postmedia.com

 

Twitter: JMarianScott

Modifié 10 mai 2016 par ScarletCoral

[acpnc]

Un cauchemar qui a commencé durant l'administration Tremblay et dont la saga se poursuit jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Malheureusement le mal est fait et il faudra réparer les pots cassés. Une leçon pour tout le monde, autant pour le ministère de la culture et autres intervenants dans le domaine, que pour la Ville. On ne sera jamais trop prudent avec le patrimoine, en ce qui a trait à sa conservation et à son intégrité, autant sur le plan structurel qu'au niveau de son intégration visuelle. Il ne faut pas lâcher le morceau sinon on aura d'autres abus semblables à déplorer. Car quand la business s'intéresse à l'Histoire, dans sa recherche de rentabilité à tout prix, elle créé bien souvent des histoires à son tour.