(The following story by Nicolas Van Praet appeared on The Montreal Gazette website on June 17.)
MONTREAL — Canadian National Railway Co. is said to be talking with four prospective buyers for its historic parcel of land south of downtown Montreal, including a movie production studio that has threatened legal action against the railway.
The railway also faces protests by residents who want political leaders to block a quick sale of the property. A group representing those living near the site is to hold a news conference today to spell out its concerns.
CN owns a 3-million-square-foot parcel of land just south of downtown in the district of Point St. Charles. The property is considered the cradle of Canada’s railway industry. Since the late 1800s, thousands of people have worked on the site building and repairing locomotives and rail cars.
Those glory days are over. Rail- equipment maker Alstom Canada, which was leasing the property from CN, relocated its operations out of Montreal. The only rail activity there now is on a small portion of the property used by Via Rail. The site is considered prime land, but decades of industrial use has almost certainly left some soil contamination.
CN shopped the property around this year based on a list of buyers it thought might be interested.
The railway asked three of the potential buyers to present detailed plans for redeveloping the land, said Pierre Fallu, a prominent railway consultant. Those firms are now conducting due diligence and evaluating the property. That’s expected to be completed by the end of June.
“This site will not have a rail vocation, that’s pretty obvious,” Fallu said. “It will be an industrial and commercial development.”
Prospective buyers are believed to include a company wanting to set up an international exhibition fair site as spelled out in a recent report by the Montreal Harbourfront Corp.
A fourth company, movie-production firm Tele-Cinema
Taurus Inc., is feuding with CN, but also wants a piece of the property.
Taurus, producer of movies like The Minion and Arrival II, said it intends to set up a movie production co-operative on the site. The company claims it has already invested $600,000 into plans for the studio and that it has a lease on a portion of the land.
CN claims no such legal agreement exists.
Taurus president Claudio Castravelli said the company’s lawyers are now in talks with a CN legal team to sort out the dispute. He vowed that Taurus will carry out its project.
“I think our plan is a really good one, but unfortunately, until everybody comes clean, we don’t know what we’re up against,” Castravelli said.
“By the end of this month … either everybody will be happy or the sparks will fly.”
Residents of Point St. Charles are angry they’ve been left out of the sale process altogether. A group called Table de Concertation Action-Gardien, which claims to speak for the community, wants public authorities to block either the sale of the land or buy the property outright and develop it with public input.
The group said yesterday it plans to plant a flag on the CN land as a symbolic demand to be heard. CN said it has met with some of the community leaders to talk about the sale.