Architects: Gensler Architecture / ACDF architecture
Environmental expert: L’OEUF - l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel

Haleco knows that Reinventing the city takes more than a project, it takes everyone working together. It takes inclusivity, education and realism to make a massive impact, fast. One thing is clear now: we cannot buy or build our way into sustainability, because resources are precious and limited.

Haleco will set the tone for the evolution of city building. Through our co-design process and citizen engagement, the project will show the potential in brilliant life-cycle thinking and real estate investment.

Haleco will build a sustainable and resilient community open to all. At the core of the project, Le Souk will be a unique place dedicated to circular economy. It will include a fablab, zero waste grocery store and restaurants, and educational services promoting ecological behavior. The project will also offer the inhabitants an urban forest, an orchard and an aeroponic farm for local food production.

People will live here, will work here, but mostly, people will come to learn here, from each other and with each other. Because to reinvent themselves, cities need resilient, affordable, accessible spaces that are smart, open to the community, to the city, and to the world. Because this is what all cities need: places where everyone can learn how to live better in their city. TOGETHER.

Key Components & Solutions

• An ambitious carbon positive objective based on both a reduction of the embodied carbon of the building and a strong strategy to capture carbon during the operational phase.

• 100% renewable energy & renewable construction materials including wood.

• The project will provide 367 rental apartments, including 40 community housing units. 

• An on-site urban forest and a 75% increase in vegetation cover of the site. 

• 423,200kg of on-site food production thanks to an orchard and an aeroponic farm & 80 new jobs dedicated to the food production & food waste recovery.

• Open to everyone, Le Souk, a unique place dedicated to circular economy, will includes a Fablab, zero waste grocery stores and restaurants, educational workshops promoting sustainable behavior...).

• Strong community engagement strategy at each stage of the project.

Presentation of the site

De la Commune Service Yard, the considered site, is located in the Cité du Multimédia adjacent to the west end of Vieux‐Montréal. The Cité du Multimédia is a neighbourhood located between Vieux Montréal, Griffintown and downtown Montréal. It is the result of a vast real‐estate project launched by the Québec government in the late 1990s, which redeveloped abandoned nineteenth‐century industrial buildings into a business cluster for information technology companies.



This site consists in a 9,382 square meters lot, currently occupied by a satellite service yard. It enjoys exceptional exposure, being located at the entrance to the city via the Bonaventure highway. It also benefits from a good accessibility by public transit, with two metro stations located less than 1.2 km away and three bus lines running in the area. The site is linked to Montréal’s bike path network as well.

The site proposes an attractive opportunity for an open program, including the possibility to develop a mixed-use project (allowed uses are residential, commercial, industrial and institutional ones).

Construction 

Construction works for this winning project has begun! Click here to read more about the official ceremony.