Holy condo

>> Little Italy religious landmark to become yuppie haven

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Last week city council approved a controversial project that will see local developers Rachel Julien turn the landmark St. John of the Cross Catholic church at the Main and St-Zotique into 59 luxury condominium housing units. According to the plan, the church, built in 1926 and closed for worship last year, will retain its structure and some space will be devoted to community groups.

The plan already has its opponents. "The most interesting part of this building is its inside and that's what will be completely demolished for condos, so they can't say they're saving the heritage," says Denis Prescott, priest at the church since 1992. Prescott argues that with a little investment the city could exploit the excellent acoustics for a concert hall, while using the rest for a community centre to cater to the many needs of the ethnically varied area. "What bugs me is that nobody is worrying about the public good here, and meanwhile politicians are misinforming the population of what the public needs and what it would really cost them," he says. "There's a public debate that never happened,"

Prescott says that although various government programs pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovating the church in the 1980s, and the building was recently insured for $6-million, city evaluators recently lowered its evaluation from $1.1-million to $600,000. Proof, he feels, that the city undervalues the landmark. "When I proposed that it be made into a community centre in 1998, the government told me that they had no money. Yet a few months later they spend $182,000 on a little decorative kiosk in the nearby park."

Others blame the church for divvying up to yuppies what was built on the coin of the devout. "I question the morality of this move," says Lise Deschamps, a neighbour active in opposing the deal. "I also question the democracy of a project pushed through in a sham neighbourhood council that deals with such immense projects in one meeting without even analyzing what impact it would have." Deschamps worries that the project will drive low-income residents from the neighbourhood and create traffic congestion.

Heritage Montreal isn't crazy about the project either. "Nobody made a property inventory that would enable anybody to say that it isn't a church worth keeping and yet people are saying that it's not worth keeping," says Dinu Bumbaru. He says that the city, in accepting a token sacrifice of space for community organizations, invites future developers to believe they can "use a community project in a church as a human shield."

He says about 150 local churches could be going on the block within the next few years and there's no process for any serious heritage evaluation. To give time for the evaluation, Bumbaru recommends the creation of a public "emergency fund available to put some of these buildings in mothballs while in transition from one state to another."

Louis Larochelle, of the seven-year-old French America Heritage Foundation, is trying desperately to scuttle the plan by invoking provincial intervention, which he hopes to inspire with a forthcoming alternate plan for the church. "It's entirely incongruous and deplorable that they want to make condos in a church. It's disrespectful. Churches are symbols of Quebec society and I think they should be preserved, if not for religion then for the community."