Senneville residents block condo development but could lose trees to house construction

It’s back to the drawing board for a residential real estate developer in Senneville, Que.

Residents in the small, rustic municipality on the western tip of the Island of Montreal recently stopped a proposed housing project from being approved.

More than 160 signatures were registered to oppose a developer who planned to build condominiums off of des Anciens-Combattants Boulevard.

The developer then withdrew the plan, which would have allowed more than 60 condominiums to be built in a village that is solely made up of single-family homes on large plots of land.

“Senneville is not a condominium community. It really isn’t,” Bill O’Brien, a longtime resident of the area, told Global News.

O’Brien lives on Elmwood Avenue, and his house backs onto the wooded area where the housing project was proposed.

“In the event that the condos had gone through, it could have set a precedent for the rest of Senneville so in the future, if a big piece of property had come up for sale, somebody might be able to say, ‘Hey, look, it’s been done before. Why can’t we do it again?'” he said.

WATCH: New Senneville Residential development proposal has residents voicing their disproval

1:47 New Senneville Residential development proposal has residents voicing their disproval

The land is now zoned for eight single-family houses.

But the construction of single-family houses would risk cutting down even more trees than the proposed condominium project.

“This forest behind us acts as a climatic regulator for this town. It also shields this town from noise pollution (and) light pollution,” Senneville resident Martin Gauthier told Global News.

Though it’s a smaller town now, there used to be 1,400 people living in Senneville in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and the mayor argues the town could have handled an influx of people had residents supported the condo project.

“The town could absorb more citizens and still keep with the small-town feel,” Senneville Mayor Julie Brisebois told Global News.

Brisebois says the original project would have saved a majority of the trees, while the single-family home proposal puts a lot more of them at risk.

“I think it’s too bad,” she said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I think it's too bad," she said.

“I think we were saving 80 per cent of that wooded area without having to spend a dollar.”

It’s now up to the real estate developer to decide whether to go ahead with the single-family home project, which would maintain the look of the village but potentially come at a huge environmental cost.