Preserving Precious Blood

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by George Maddux

A couple of feet north of the bustling Villa-Maria metro lies an old contemplative area for the sisters of the Precious Blood Order, cloistered nuns who led silent, monastic lives. Barns, grottoes, a path and 64 century-old trees still silently salute that quiet past. But if Gesor, the construction company run by the controversial Magi brothers, gets its way, buzzsaws, backhoes and cranes will replace the space with new housing.

A residents' committee has urgently rushed to action, but theirs is not the typical nimby stance. "There's room for a good development that keeps the good aspects of the site and that would probably give the city the same revenues as this proposed thing," says Avrum Dunsky of the Villa-Maria Coalition. "They want to build a whole slew of rather large townhouses, but they could easily build roughly the same number of units by using the space a little more judiciously and then they'd save the whole wooded area--something every heritage expert and every study has recommended." The group wants the city to declare public hearings on the issue, which they also called for five years ago when a similar plan was proposed. When they were turned down last time, they ended up spending $12,000 on their own hearings, which ultimately succeeded in discouraging a prior developer from turning any soil. Dunsky says the city promised to make the space a public park in 1989 and that Eastern NDG is among the areas with the least park space on the island.