Benny Sports Complex gets green light, focus shifts to library for NDG

Elected officials from the City of Montreal, the borough and the Quebec government converged in the area last Friday to announce a three-way funding deal.

It will see the borough pay more than $7 million, the province $5 million, and Montreal $3 million, for a project initially dreamed up nearly a decade ago by former city councillor Jeremy Searle. The borough anticipates awarding a construction contract in September, with an opening date forecast for December in 2010.

Originally slated for a parcel of land purchased by the City of Montreal for $2.4 million on the Benny Farm site on the southwest corner of Monkland and Benny avenues, the complex's location was changed to the other side in Benny Park when the project was paired up with a complementary undertaking — to replace the park's obsolete Benny Pool.

As the plans now stand, the complex, whose main entrance will be on Monkland, will have a gymnasium, an indoor swimming pool with six 25-metre lanes, an adjacent outdoor deck, and multi-functional rooms. There will be no on-site parking, but Applebaum said "there is enough parking in the area" on the street.

The borough hopes to use the outdoor Benny Pool this summer for the last time. There would be no pool available at Benny Park next year. Plans and specifications defining the project in detail, as well as calls for construction contract tenders, will be prepared over the coming weeks.

NDG Liberal MNA Russell Copeman, who was one of an entourage of officials (including Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay) on hand for the announcement, quoted from a weekly newspaper column Searle wrote last October, in which Searle claimed, "It's only a matter of time before Jean Charest's Liberals, who know that NDG will vote for them regardless, will also say no to this project." "The skeptics have been confounded," said Copeman. According to Applebaum, it took a year to get the borough, the city and the province to agree on how they'd share the funding. "In the future, we will be able to work with the community and hopefully announce also a library, but this will not house a library," he said.

Margaret Ford, a longtime fitness activist in NDG who has been leading a coalition of local sports and recreation groups with a vested interest in the complex's completion, was pleased they finally got their wish. "This is great, it's real and we're going to start digging and we're so excited," she said.

Raj Ramtuhol, a member of a group of residents who were upset by the demise of the Fraser-Hickson Library, and who then were critical of this project, remains disappointed that it's being built in the park, where green space will be compromised. "They still have the south side, they paid $2.4 million for that land, and that's where they should build it," he said.

In an interview, Applebaum said the borough and the city are "looking to build a $16 million library" in NDG. "It is priority number three at the Centre City administration," he said, adding that the number one library project, in Rosemont-Petite Patrie, has already been completed, and that only one project is now ahead of the one for NDG.