Convent conversion up again for debate

The issue of turning a grand Outremont convent into condos is back again on the city council agenda. Once a religious building, bought by the Université de Montréal before the school realized that renovating it would be too expensive, now it wants to sell it off to be converted into luxury condos.

Montreal is full of buildings like this: supported for decades if not centuries by ecclesiastical tax breaks, suddenly they can turn up as profitable cash cows on the private side, and the public is largely oblivious to the theft of these public-supported assets. Some politician ought to make a huge issue of this, because it covers a lot of ground in this town.