(Quebec) Create a “piece of town”. This is literally the goal of the promoters of the Fleur de Lys project in Quebec, worth 1.5 billion. With its green spaces, shops, housing and entertainment, the future site will set a precedent in the way of redeveloping shopping centers, they argue.
A shopping center with a large parking lot, built with concrete walls without windows and where it is difficult to find the exit: this is the description given by William Trudel, president and CEO of Trudel, of the current shopping center Fleur de Lys, which he acquired with his brother Jonathan in 2018.
This portrait corresponds to the image of many shopping centers built in the 1960s, according to him. But with his development project on the current site of Fleur de Lys, Mr. Trudel intends to end the reign of this type of shopping place.
With its campus of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR), its 3,500 rental units (social, affordable housing, adapted for people with disabilities), many of which will be ready at the beginning of 2025, its 700,000 square feet of commercial premises, its 150-room hotel, its green spaces, its 2,500 trees, its meeting places, its office spaces, the project, presented Wednesday at the end of the day to the population of Quebec, completely redefines the concept of shopping center, according to William Trudel, met earlier this week not far from the construction site of the future site.
“A mall’s viewing spectrum is no longer based solely on retail. Your shopping center is no longer a place where you will go only to pick up a product. You can live there, you can work there, you can study there. »
“We are going to go from a dark site from 5:30 p.m. to a lively site”, illustrates the associate architect and urban designer Érick Rivard.
To develop its plans, Trudel, commercial real estate acquisition and project development fund, consulted nearly 70 merchants and some 60 community organizations for five years.
During our visit, the cranes and piles of earth proved that the site was already well underway. Shops will remain open throughout the work. Most, like Maxi and Walmart, which generate a lot of traffic, will be part of the future shopping center. However, it was impossible to have the name of the new retailers who will set up there. Located not far from the Videotron Center, surrounded by several highways, isn’t the future site likely to generate more traffic? Rather, it will have the opposite effect, believes the main interested party.
“Currently, the traffic converges at Fleur de Lys because there is a large parking lot. The cars stay there and they leave almost all at the same time. We will reconnect streets that already exist [and which will pass through the site], which will create several entry and exit options. »
The Government of Quebec has invested 43 million in the Trudel brothers’ project, initially estimated at 750 million in 2022.
