by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Late last October, Centre-Sud residents read in their daily newspapers that Radio-Canada was selling off 80,000 square feet of one its east-end HQ’s parking lots to condo developers Le Groupe le Versant. Many were not amused. The conspicuous lack of public consultation raised the ire of residents, some of whom remember the days when a federal diktat evicted tenants and businesses from their homes to make way for the construction of the Ceeb’s office tower. To add insult to injury, the proposed development would erect approximately 140 condo units, hardly the kind of housing, critics charge, local residents want, need or can afford.

“These condominiums are going to change the face of this community,” says Jean-François Hallé, a community organizer at Alerte Centre-Sud, a coalition of community groups in the area. “There should have been public consultations. Radio-Canada is not being a very good corporate citizen in the neighbourhood.”

Not that community groups are opposed to any new construction per se. In fact, says Eric Michaud, another Alerte Centre-Sud member, “We approve of the building of housing, but there should be at least some mixed social housing….Radio-Canada refuses to recognize the debt they owe to this neighbourhood, and we find that unacceptable.”

In response to the project, Alerte Centre-Sud has created the Coalition de l’autre Versant, cobbling together almost 90 housing and community organizations and the political support of Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe. Even Radio-Canada’s administration union, says Hallé, are opposed to the project because they’ll lose some of their parking spaces.

But the Versant condo project has its own problems with the City of Montreal. As it stands now, it has little chance of being approved at the municipal level because of the terms of the agreements set down in the ’60s, when Radio-Canada acquired the land. “[Under the terms of the agreement,] Radio-Canada needs to present to the [borough urban planning] committee a projection of what it wants to do with all of the land around the building, and not just one part of it,” says Jean-Luc Thibeault, press attaché to the committee president, Robert Laramée. “We haven’t received it yet.”

That’s because there isn’t one for the entire site, says Marie-José LeBlanc, a spokesperson for Radio-Canada. She says a site plan was agreed upon between Radio-Canada and the developers for a chunk of the western parking lot, but because the east side is zoned as commercial, there is no plan that will include the entire land. As for the question of public consultation and lack thereof, there is no legal requirement for Radio-Canada to consult with residents over the sale. “We’ve always given the same answer,” she says. “And not to be glib, but the answer we give is, we’re not developers. We decided to sell a parcel of land so we can finance our programming.”

The borough urban planning committee will study the plan today, Thursday. If the committee accepts the proposal, the plan will go to the city’s urban development department for rubber-stamp approval. :