by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

For 100 years, St-Henri proletariat who snagged a job at the cigarette factory at 3711 St-Antoine W. felt that they’d wafted up into a smoky heaven.

“Those were well-paying jobs with good work conditions, there was a real feeling of belonging among those who worked there,” says Pierre Morissette, a community organizer for RESO (Regroupement économique et social du Sud-Ouest).

While local industry like Coleco Toys and Simmons mattresses took hundreds of St-Henri’s manufacturing jobs out of the province, Imperial Tobacco stayed put. They even invested $60-million to modernize production in 1999 before suddenly pulling the plug in 2003, when they relocated 150 jobs to Guelph, Ontario. Those jobs recently moved on to Monterrey, Mexico.

The employment void was only slightly eased by the company’s heavy metal goodbye gifts. “They agreed to leave some equipment to local business,” says Morissette. “There’s a place down here that uses Imperial’s metalworking machine and another kitchen supplies place also got equipment, so they showed some evidence of social responsibility.”

Now the Mirror has learned that the iconic lower-land landmark will become a happy place again for lesser-well-off Montrealers, as a deal has been struck to transform the massive building into a 481-unit condo project, with almost half of all units aimed at lower-income residents.

Among the first things the new owner plans to do in its five-year, $80-million transformation will be to uncover the windows now hidden by a layer of aluminium and surrounded by a Soviet-style concrete façade, a major visual downer to anybody walking by the St-Antoine W. plant. “We’re going to restore it to what it looked like originally,” says Jonathan Sigler, co-president and owner of project developers Alliance Prével. “It was all closed up in the ’70s, during the October crisis, when they decided to make the place secure.”

The project will have green roof elements, 200 parking spots, a Commun-auto fleet of rental cars for non-car owners, but what excites local do-gooders is that 45 per cent of the units will be targeted to low-income earners. Thirty per cent of the units will be sold under $150,000, which allows first-time buyers to qualify for a $6,500 city home-buying grant. Another 15 per cent of the total will be sold to a non-profit group that will, in turn, offer subsidized units.

The average price for a condo in St-Henri in 2004 was $220,000, higher than Verdun at $165,000 but lower than downtown’s $310,000 according to the Canada Mortgage and House Corporation. Morissette says the low price-tags on the units have met some local approval.

Yet the renaissance of the cigarette factory as housing wasn’t RESO’s first choice. “When something that size closes, the first goal is to find economic activities to replace it,” says Morissette. “There were hundreds of jobs in that place, but there was nothing to replace it in terms of job creation. The other option is housing, and there’s a great need for housing in south-west Montreal.”

All of the details will be fleshed out at a public consultation on the project Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 525 Dominion at 7 p.m.