Czech Center -- Suburban

2005-07-06 09:01:43



$1M-for-$1 canal deal stalled


By P. A. Sévigny, The Suburban



Peel Basin: Proposed hotel would be close to planned casino/entertainment complex.

The Sud-Ouest borough council has delayed a decision on a spot-rezoning request that would have cleared the way for a Czech community centre and a 75-room luxury hotel on Canada Parks land.
The demand was removed from the agenda while Parks Canada conducts an internal probe into the deal, which gave real estate promoter George Syrovatka Crown land worth $1 million for $1.
The six-storey hotel on the north bank of the Lachine Canal would be a short walk from the proposed $1.5 billion Loto Quebec casino/Cirque de Soleil entertainment complex on the south side of the Peel Basin.
In shelving the request, borough chairwoman Jacqueline Montpetit and councillors Robert Bousquet and Line Hamel explained that they couldn’t understand why the federal government signed a 99-year lease with Syrovatka, allowing for a non-conforming development on 15,000 square feet of Parks Canada land near the eastern end of the Lachine Canal linear park.
The parcel is strategically situated on the corner of Olier and Du Séminaire streets immediately to the east of the boarded-up Canada Post sorting plant, itself due to be leased. Both lots form an integral part of a 1.5 million-square-foot tract owned by Parks Canada stretching along the north side of the canal from the bridge at the foot of Mountain St. to the MacAuslan Brewery to the west.
Last night’s decision to stall the project followed a public information meeting last Wednesday, where it quickly became obvious that the project, while small in and of itself, was part of a major real-estate blitz in the abandoned former industrial areas at the canal’s northeastern end.
La Cache founder Chris Cornell, who owns the property next to the vacant lot, said he had offered to buy the property from Public Works Canada, then headed by former cabinet minister Alfonso Gagliano.
“Three years ago, the government wrote back to tell me that the land was definitely not for sale,” Cornell said. Yet shortly after Cornell received the government’s reply, he heard that the land had been leased to a group planning to build a centre for the city’s Czech community which has since morphed into the luxury hotel.
If the hotel is built as planned, Cornell fears it will ruin whatever plans he has to develop his own property because of the now limited access and its ruined sight lines.
Three years ago this August, a group led by Syrovatka and claiming to represent the city’s Czech community paid $1 for a 99-year lease for the lot. While the group had originally stated they wanted to build a small community centre, the promoter presented revised plans to the borough in January, 2005, requesting a derogation that would allow him to construct a building 25 metres in height, double the current height limit.
At last week’s information meeting, the borough council was stunned to hear real estate specialist Samuel Ralph announce he had several clients who would be ready to offer up to a $1 million for the Czech Centre’s lease.
“I’m selling land for people who are asking for up to $65 a square foot for land in this area, and I have buyers who are prepared to pay up to $50 for the same land,” said Ralph. “If you compare that to $3 in Laval or $6 off Notre Dame Street near Dickson in the east end, it’s an expensive piece of real estate.”
Ralph described the Sud-Ouest’s booming Griffintown real estate market as a feeding frenzy for the sharks.
“People are running after this market,” he said. “Power Corporation bought a couple of properties, including the old Séguin machine shop on the north shore of the canal while the city owns the old Agmont property on the south side.”
But Ralph had reservations about the height of the proposed hotel. “This hotel is going to be as tall as the old Northern Electric building on St. Patrick Street and there won’t be five metres of space between the hotel and the canal. The basement will be flooded and the sightlines along the canal will be completely destroyed.”
But Ralph doesn’t think last night’s refusal will halt the real-estate boom in that neighbourhood.
“Even if they stop this project,” he said, “it doesn’t matter because someone’s going to make him or herself a lot of easy money. After all, that lease can still be sold and it didn’t cost them much now, did it?”
Cornell’s lawyer Robert Charlton hinted at political problems.
“Why is Canada Parks holding an internal inquiry on this dossier?” he demanded. “Why won’t the government tell us what’s going on with this file? Who were the group’s contacts in the Public Works, Heritage Canada and Parks Canada? Why did the federal government ask for a $50,000 deposit for the project’s landscaping when there was no demand for money as a guarantee for the site’s decontamination?”
A clause in the group’s lease stipulates the site must be decontaminated within two years of the signing of the lease, Charlton noted, adding that the site had still not been cleaned up. He then asked the borough’s councillors why they were even considering the project when it was obvious that the group had already broken their lease.
Charlton was also curious as to how the Czech Centre dossier made its way from Alfonso Gagliano’s department over to Sheila Copp’s cultural heritage just three months before the deal was signed.
Syrovatka, the businessman who heads the hotel project, told the meeting he had simply asked for the lease.
“We’re doing this for our community,” he said. “We have letters from the Czech government and the Czech ambassador. They all support this project.”
Syrovatka said the hotel was added to the project so that the community centre could support itself without having to always depend upon the government for its subsidies.
“Four years ago, when we asked for the land, nobody was interested in the project,” he added. “Now that the casino is going up on the other side of the canal, everybody is interested.”
But Jean Durcak, the president of Montreal’s Maison Tchèque, questioned the legitimacy of the Syrovatka group’s claim to represent Montreal’s Czech community.
“Since when does Mr. Syrovatka represent Montreal’s Czech community?” he asked. “I represent Montreal’s Czech community, and this is the first time I hear about this project.”
Durcak told Montpetit that he had never heard of the Czech centre project until he went to see the borough’s urban planning department about another affair. That was when he saw the notice posted for the Wednesday evening meeting.
Durcak said that he and other members of the Czech community got the idea for a community centre some five years ago, after which they approached Syrovatka for some help with their project. Durcak said Syrovatka later told him that there were problems with the decontamination of the site and that the project did not seem to be going anywhere. After Durcak called Syrovatka a few times, he said that he let the matter drop when his calls were not returned.
“After a while,” he said, “when nothing seemed to be happening, we dropped the idea and everybody forgot about it.”
Jean Pierre Leclerc, an artist and community activist, was quite curious about the Syrovatka group’s astounding luck.
“If the Czech government was willing to grant a group of Montreal artists 15,000 square feet of prime downtown real estate in the heart of Prague for the equivalent of one Canadian dollar, I wouldn’t mind so much. But we’re still waiting….”