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In November 2004, we confirmed our commitment to this commu-

nity by signing a partnership agreement with the Inter-Neighbour-

hood Coalition. Not only does this agreement ensure open dialogue

with the community, but it also promotes potential employability,

environmental protection, economic development and accessibility.

THE SAINT-HENRI ANNEX PROJECT PROPOSAL

Alex Carruthers - Taleen Der Haroutiounian - Etienne Faucher - Megan Rolph

– MUHC on its work to strengthen ties with the communities around the new

Glen Campus.

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February 2010

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The Saint-Henri Annex is a semi-public, non-profit, training facility designed to create a social and eco-nomic connection between the Saint-Henri community and the new McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) Glen Campus. Made possible through a close collaboration between the Commission scolaire de Montreal (CSDM), the Regroupement économique et social du Sud-Ouest (RESO) and the MUHC, it capitalizes on its physical proximity to the Glen Campus by providing complementary uses that will serve both the community and the hospital.

This 4-storey, 80,000 sq. ft public training centre will become a dynamic pole for educational, business and leisure activities. It will include:

• 21,000 sq. ft of classrooms and offices for a training facility geared to providing instruction for a variety of occupations in the health care sector.

• 23,000 sq. ft of ground-level retail, which will have grocers, cafes and other shops geared to the local community.

• 34,000 sq. ft of open floor space for conferences, community use, and open concept office space.

The project is expected to cost an estimated $16 million, with a third of the costs to be covered by the government and other public agencies. The public investment will be used to help subsidize the training facility and community space, while the office and retail space will be charged market rates. The rents from the non-public uses, as well as from advertising on the structure will be the primary sources of rev-enue for the Saint-Henri Annex.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

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Saint-Henri

Les Tanneries

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MUHC

A Growing healthcare sector

Health care personnel shortfalls

Integrating with surrounding Community

Tanneries Village

Between two Megaprojects

Lack of quality public space

Lacking amenities Food local cafe

Province

Highway awkwardly dividing neighbours

FTQ Development plans on the corner

Integrating 500 new low income residents

Home Depot

Continued operation of their store

Good neighbourhood relations

Retention of highway visibility

RCA Complex

Heritage property development

Creating a link to the hospital

A market for new back-lot construction

StHenri

Under employed local population

Local heritage

Stewardship of healthy local community

ThE bIg PICTuRE

This project is located on the Island of Montreal along the western edge of Saint-Henri at the corner of rue de Courcelle and rue Saint-Jacques Ouest. Saint-Henri was an active factory town where an industrial land use prevailed. Today, it has grown into a quiet community that contains traces of its industrial past within a current mix of residential, commercial and institutional build-ings. The project’s immediate surroundings reflect the crossing point between the different types of uses present in Saint-Henri.

An appreciation of the neighborhood’s requirements and concerns was critical for conceiving of a project that helps to link the Hospital and the community. The following is a list of considerations from the community surrounding the Annex project.

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Community involvement

Partnerships

Employment

accessibility

greening con nectivity

greening

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The Saint-Henri Annex is a development that will meet the needs of the community and the demands of the MUHC. The proposed training facility will open up new employment opportunities for the residents of Saint-Henri while satisfying the increasing demand for health care workers at the hospital. The development of a multi-purpose training facility seeks to address the social and economic disparities existing in the neighbourhood. It will also provide much needed amenities, community space, and social services for the area’s residents. The following is a list of considerations for the Annex’s neighbours.

The Annex aspires to create new physical, social and economic connections to the hospital through the education and em-ployment of Saint-Henri residents.

The Annex will help to address the looming labour shortages in the healthcare sector due to the “greying of the population.” The imminent retirement of many healthcare professionals in combination with swelled demand for health care services from our aging demographic will cause a major strain on Quebec’s healthcare system. Action must be taken quickly to ensure there are enough trained healthcare workers to meet these future needs. Furthermore, the changing structure of the health care system has led to more specialized occupations and the downloading of work to lower level occupations, creat-ing demand for workers such as beneficiaries, assistant nurses, pharmaceutical assistants and medical secretaries. RESO, whose responsibility is to develop strategies to promote job creation in the South-West Borough, should work closely with the Saint-Henri Annex to create opportunities for the residents of the Borough from the forthcoming challenges that face the Quebec healthcare sector.

COnCEPT

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The project site is situated on a 31,000 square foot triangular-shaped plot of land at the corner of rue de Courcelle and rue Saint-Jacques. Its third edge is bound by both the Hwy. 720 overpass and the Saint-Jacques Escarpment.

The land is currently divided into eight lots. Of these, two are owned by a private landowner, while the remaining lots are owned by the City of Montreal. Existing structures on the land include a small, vacant, 2-storey building on the private landowner’s property, and a large billboard pole that contains two advertising sides facing the ve-hicular traffic on the Hwy. 720 overpass.

PART I – SITE FACTS

The Saint-HenriAnnex project maximizes thepotential of the site while conforming to all of the zoning by-laws and requirements set by the Sud-Ouest borough (see Table 1), other than a minor variance to include institutional uses on the site.

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The design of the proposed building reflects the role of the Saint-Henri Annex as the point of interaction between Saint-Henri and the MUHC Glen Campus.

The portion of the building that fronts rue de Courcelle is a 4-storey (approximately 12.5m) rect-angular building designed in a traditional style with brick and steel to pay homage to Saint-Henri’s ex-isting built heritage and industrial past.

The 4-storey glass and steel structure fronting rue Saint-Jacques follows the triangular shape of the lot’s remaining area. Its street facade takes full advantage of the site’s southern exposure, and its wavy shape invites pedestrians to the Villages des Tanneries and a path leading up to the MUHC Glen Campus. A one-storey, below-grade parking lot with ap-proximately 50 parking spaces is located directly underneath the building.

As a building for the people of Saint-Henri, the build-ing is designed to maximize the pedestrian-friendly environment and minimize its environmental impact. The top two storeys are set back from the property line to create a comfortable environment for pedes-trians while integrating with the facade height of the surrounding buildings. Extensive green roofs will contribute to create more pleasant views

PART II – ThE buILDIng

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of the building and serve as a sustainable technical remedy to absorb stormwater and reduce the heat is-land effect of the immediate area.

GROUND FLOOR RETAIL

A cafe, bakery, small grocer and pharmacy – these are the types of retail the Saint-Henri Annex project is designed to attract on the ground level of the building to serve both the MUHC and Saint-Henri. The project’s location, and the density of the sur-rounding area, makes the addition of retail very feasible and attractive. The configuration of the road network puts the Saint-Henri Annex project at the crossroads of important arteries which ensure strong accessibility of the site to potential clients. Storefronts facing both rue Saint-Jacques and rue de Courcelle will benefit from the MUHC employees and residents of the Vil-lages des Tanneries passing by throughout the day. Development at the RCA building and the affordable housing project across the street will increase pedestrian and vehicular activity. More-over, there is a current demand for small-scale retail to serve the

community residents in this area of Saint-Henri.

TRAINING FACILITY

The top three storeys fronting on rue de Courcelle will contain classrooms and laboratories exclusively for job training in health care related services. One possible tenant is a nurse training pro-gram currently offered by the Centre de Saint-Raymond, which is managed in partnership with the City of Montreal and the CSDM, located in Notre-Dame-De-Grâce. The nursing program current-ly occupies three classrooms and one computer lab but they have expressed an interest to enlarge their facilities. The ample class-room and office space offered in this building, and its proximity to the MUHC Glen Campus, would provide a suitable option for their expansion.

DIVISIOn OF SPACE

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OPEN-CONCEPT OFFICE SPACE

Flexible, open-concept office spaces that can be transformed to meet the needs of the community and the MUHC are located on the top three storeys of the portion of the building fronting rue Saint-Jacques. The generous floor space provides enough room to meet the needs of companies that are seeking an open-concept work space. The MUHC is also antici-pating a need for a large space located off the Glen Campus grounds that can be rented occasionally for conferences or job recruitment fairs, the proposed open-concept floor plan will easily accommodate these activities. These flexible and adaptable office spaces could also be used for other social services, such as an employment centre or a day care facility for the residents of Saint-Henri.

DIVISIOn OF SPACE

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Saint-Jacques Escarpment situated behind the building un-der the Hwy. 720 overpass. This escarpment has a history of eroding and causing mudslides, and unless the escarpment is landscaped with erosion-prevention methods this prob-lem will only get worse with the stormwater runoff from the MUHC Glen Campus. Landscaping the escarpment will also create a connecting corridor between the Saint-Henri Annex project site and the green space on the MUHC Glen Cam-pus.

Development of open space areas can also benefit from a partnership with Home Depot to assist in the landscaping. Home Depot’s previous work in the Village des Tanneries demonstrates its com

The remaining space on the Saint-Henri Annex lot will serve as an attractive interface between the building and its surround-ings while providing both environmental and social benefits. There will be a landscaped public space with seating, bike racks and a public fountain on the corner of rue Saint-Jacques and rue de Courcelle. Bollards and other traffic-calming design features will be located along rue Saint-Jacques to protect and insulate people using this space from the high volume of speeding traf-fic that exists along this corridor. This public space will form a connection with the public community garden found across rue Saint-Jacques in the Village des Tanneries and with the open space across the intersection.

Although outside the Saint-Henri Annex project boundaries, it is highly recommended that landscaping take place on the

OuTDOOR PubLIC SPACE

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mitment to community involvement. Funding is al-ready available through the Home Depot’s “Building Healthy Communities” grants which are awarded to registered non-profit organizations. One of these grants was used in a similar project to landscape and incorporate a mountain bike trail under the Interstate 5 Highway in Seattle, Washington. Most important-ly, a partnership to landscape the Saint-Henri Annex project will give Home Depot the opportunity to be-come involved in the process of connecting the com-munity and MUHC on this site.

Underground parking for 50 cars will be provided underneath the Saint-Henri Annex, free of charge. Parking will be provided for the teachers and stu-dents of the training facility, for the office tenants, and for those wishing to park in order to shop at the various retail outlets. It is also recommended that on street parking be considered on the north side of rue

Saint-Jacques to help buffer pedestrians from the traffic along the busy corridor. On street parking would also help support the retail businesses lo-cated on the ground-floor of the Annex.

OuTDOOR PubLIC SPACE

mercial space to be rented, allowing for a variety of retail opportunities in the Saint-Henri Annex. There is also a significant amount of space for of-fices, with 34,000 square feet, allowing for ap-proximately 153 office units at $21 a square foot. Classrooms have also been included as a small revenue source. They are charged the lowest rents, at $12 a square foot, with an area to allow for 30 classrooms in the building. Based on these revenue streams, the building will need to charge on average $23 a square foot in order to ensure a positive net present value. A final revenue source will come from advertising, which presently ex-ists on the site. Advertising draws $240,000 in revenue every year which will be used to help subsidize the training facility.

PRO FORMA

Based on the costs and revenues discussed above, a financial feasibility study was conducted. Inter-est rates have been set at 5%, amortized over a 20 year period. Inflation has been included at 3% and applied to both rents and advertising revenue. Based on these assumptions this plan will have a Net Present Value of $826,271, a Return on In-vestment of 8%, a Return on Equity of 12% and an Internal Rate of Return of 10%. With these re-turns, the Saint-Henri is financially feasible and a worthwhile investment for the long-term eco-nomic health of the community.

PART III – FINANCIAL FEASABILITY

COSTS

The total cost of the Saint-Henri Annex is rough-ly $16 million. A third of the principle costs will be covered by the government, which is approxi-mately $5.5 million. Due to the public nature and potential social benefits of the Saint-Henri Annex, a government grant will be the primary source of equity. Beyond the costs of land ac-quisition, construction, and demolition, costs have been incorporated for soil decontamination for the entire site, up to two metres deep. Also included is green roofing for the portion of the building facing rue Saint-Jacques. Furthermore, the project includes one level of underground parking for up to 50 cars. The cost table shows the cost per square foot, the area, total costs, and the weighted average per square foot of $146 (not including land acquisition), which is used in the final pro forma.

REVENUES

Revenue sources include ground floor commer-cial: which is charged the highest rents at $36/square foot, to help fund the building’s other uses. There is roughly 23,000 square feet of com-