CSL OKs Marc Chagall townhouse project under hydro lines

During Côte St. Luc city council's monthly meeting last week, councillors Dida Berku and Steven Erdelyi voted against a draft by-law to re-zone a long-vacant piece of land on Marc Chagall. A public consultation meeting on the issue is expected to be held in the next few months.

The City of Côte St. Luc began last December to consider Montreal developer Jerome Winikoff's proposal to build a 21-unit rowhouse project on the quiet street, a few blocks east of Cavendish Boulevard. Since the lot had been zoned for a strip mall for decades, putting housing on it required a zoning change.

Last December during a meeting of local city councillor Mike Cohen's district advisory council, more than 50 residents listened to a presentation on the project given by Winikoff. However, some expressed concerns it would be located too close to the overhead power lines.

Last week, Berku, while maintaining she understood "the will and the wish of the residents of the neighbourhood to have residential development," said, "I will be voting against … because I feel that this particular project … has got houses and also balconies and backyards of single-family homes, row houses, built right into the hydro servitude."

Saying she was waiting for answers from Hydro Quebec to questions she asked about locating residences within the electric company's power corridor, Berku added, "I just personally am opposed to putting housing for young families that close to the hydro lines. I think that we could have had another plan for residential development further away and not within 34 feet of the poles themselves and right in the hydro servitude."

While acknowledging that scientific evidence remains inconclusive on the ill effects to humans by power lines, Erdelyi said that, based on some research he did, as well as "my principle of putting safety first, I cannot and will not vote in favour of this motion."

Councillor Glenn Nashen, who also had reservations but ended up voting for the re-zoning, said that "in the absence of any conclusive advisories from the regulating authority … that it's really not within our jurisdiction to be able to make health advisories, if you will, and therefore the onus falls upon the buyer."

Mayor Anthony Housefather pointed out that a good number of Côte St. Luc residents are already living in fairly close proximity to power lines. "People in the Marquise are just as close to the power lines as the people would be here," he said, referring to a nearby multi-storey residential building on Marc Chagall. "I don't think that it's fair, unless we're going to tell everybody else that they should move, to make this kind of a decision."