In a press conference on Thursday August 8th, along with several West Island Mayors, Mayor Valerie Plante announced a proposal to build a 3,000-hectare ‘Grand parc de l’ouest’ (Great West Park). It could be fifteen times the size of Mount Royal park, at least eight times the size of Manhattan, New York’s Central Park and the largest municipal park in Canada. It will combine parks running from St. Anne de Bellevue and across Ile Bizard.
West Island could get largest municipal park in Canada
Plante stated, as far as funding the project, that she is ‘”…having conversations with the federal and provincial governments, but it’s worth it. This is how we need to change the paradigm.” There are developments already in the planning stages in some of the areas where the park would be built on, but Montreal and other borough Mayors have the right of ‘preemption’ (the purchase of goods or shares by one person or party before the opportunity is offered to others)and therefore can have first bids on any of the properties in question. The announcement of the proposal is just the beginning of other stages to come, with public consultations planned in the next few weeks.
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