People who pass through Laval without knowing this municipality well generally wonder where its city center is located. A question that will soon no longer be relevant. The heart of the municipality will have 42,000 new housing units which will be built within 10 years and which will accommodate 100,000 more residents.
Published at 6:30 a.m.
This is the plan that the mayor of Laval, Stéphane Boyer, will unveil next Tuesday, who will make public his vision for the redeployment of the city, structured mainly around the large shopping centers in his municipality.
If the flagship city of the northern crown of Montreal has developed over the years as a suburb made up mainly of single-family homes, in recent years it has begun to densify with the construction of residential and office towers, particularly in Espace Montmorency and in several other areas of the city.
The movement will now accelerate.
Large developers like Cadillac Fairview, Cominar, SmartCentres and the Mach Group will be active simultaneously on several large real estate projects all focused on density.
“Over the next 10 years, we will build more than 4,000 units per year, which is double what we did over the last 10 years. These are all tower projects of 15 to 25 floors which will be built in the parking lots of certain centers [commerciaux] or on land owned by the City. This will allow us to welcome 100,000 new residents,” Stéphane Boyer explains to me, visibly excited by this significant transformation of his city.
MODEL PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF LAVAL
Model of future developments
From the outset, Mayor Boyer confirms to me that downtown Laval is located in the area located between the Montmorency metro station and Carrefour Laval, an area whose densification has already begun and which will accelerate from this year.
Thus, Center Laval, the shopping center located east of Highway 15, near Place Bell, will be transformed to become a complex of 3,500 housing units. Just to the north, the former Brault & Martineau store is already being transformed to make way for a 1,500 housing project.
On the other side of the 15, the municipality will use its 4.5 million square feet of land, which it partly rented from the Illumi site, to make it an eco-district which will have 3,500 housing units, including affordable housing. affordable developed in partnership with the Angus Company.
Further north, Cadillac Fairview will transform the Carrefour Laval parking lot into a 5,000-unit complex, while Cominar and its Centropolis will do the same thing in a 3,700-unit project.
Densification at high speed
All these projects are in progress and the City of Laval has listed a total of 138 real estate projects which will take shape throughout its territory over the next 10 years.
For years, people have been saying that there is a shortage of housing in Quebec. We have the potential and the context that is favorable to us. We have available land, zoning that allows for densification and serious developers who have the means to achieve their ambitions.
Stéphane Boyer, mayor of Laval
“We want projects with quality of life. Each complex must have 25% green spaces, parking must be underground. These are all mixed projects which will allow cohabitation with commercial spaces on the ground floor,” he explains.
And the municipality made sure not to make the mistakes of the past, like in the Griffintown project where we forgot to build schools.
“We have increased the capacity of our fire stations, we have planned the construction of four schools, we have also reserved spaces for parks, we want to offer a good quality of life,” insists Stéphane Boyer.
Obviously, the City intends to improve its public transportation offering on its territory to ensure good fluidity for its new residents and is still counting on the completion of the extension of the orange metro line from Montmorency station to Carrefour Laval and possibly connecting it to Côte-Vertu station in Montreal.
All projects that are starting are exclusively in the rental housing market. It is the one that currently dominates, but over the next 10 years, it is very likely that condo tower projects and even office towers will be integrated into the various sites under construction.
The city will continue to welcome single-family housing projects in its various suburban neighborhoods, but outside the densified territory located near its city center.
Laval will also significantly increase its cultural offerings as construction begins on a large library and a cultural center which will accommodate around fifteen organizations from different artistic disciplines. This center located near the Montmorency metro station will cost 150 million. This is the largest cultural infrastructure under construction in Quebec.
Laval wants to intensify its densification, but the City is not just dreaming about it. “We are in production mode and everything will be done simultaneously,” rejoices Stéphane Boyer. Ultimately, in 10 years and with 100,000 additional residents, Laval could surpass Quebec as the second largest city in Quebec.
