Habitat plan uprooted

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by GEORGE MADDUX

Residents battling to save their garden from a housing development, ("Habitat for headaches," August 24) found themselves on their knees in front of Mayor Bourque last Saturday. But that's because they were busy planting 350 tulip bulbs when the Mayor wheeled up to the 16,000-square-foot Pointe St-Charles lot alone in his perky subcompact. Bourque was bringing news of his decision to cancel a plan to hand the land to Habitat for Humanity, which would have razed the garden to build 14 two-storey houses for low-income families.

The settlement averted a conflict that would have seen the flower-loving Mayor--in the name of a Christian-affiliated low-cost housing group--trying to scrap the garden tended largely by Michael Fish, the battle-scarred leader of three decades of fighting to save local landmarks.

"When I got the news, I felt a very warm glow spread from my loins to my back and shoulders," says Fish, who adds that Bourque is "a very likeable guy." But Fish still opposes some of the Mayor's other ideas, such as a proposed 12-storey apartment building next to the Gleneagles on Côte-des-Neiges. He's also defending the Christian Science Church a few blocks south. "It's one of our few examples of early modern architectural expression. It's too noisy for an apartment building to work there anyway."

Bourque, meanwhile, is expected to offer Habitat for Humanity a similar plot in another part of Pointe St-Charles.

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