The city of Montreal has firm ideas about how to make the downtown core attractive to families as it plans to add 50,000 new residents by 2050.

According to city officials the key to to having children in the city is creating space for schools and parks.

To that end the city of Montreal is hoping to take advantage of several former hospitals and one hospital that will soon be closed.

"There is no school in downtown Montreal," said Richard Bergeron, the urban planner who is responsible for shepherding the changes Montreal has in store.

He wants a school to be placed on the site of the former Montreal Children's Hospital in Shaughnessy Village.

Developer Luc Poirier bought the 120,000 square-metre site at Atwater and René Levesque last year, and while he has talked about possibly creating a baseball stadium, he has apparently settled on building a school, a community centre, a library and housing.

"We know that it will be the project that the mayor asked for more than a year ago," said Bergeron.

A formal announcement about the Children's site is expected very soon.

Next is the former Royal Victoria Hospital.

With most facilities moved to the Glen Hospital last year the building will likely be transferred to McGill University, which has plans to turn the Royal Victoria into a mixed-use building that will likely include housing for students.

Those plans would include demolishing some newer buildings and remodeling older sections of the hospital that first opened in 1893.

A few blocks from the Royal Vic, at Park and Pine, is the convent of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph.

Acquired by the city earlier this year, the nuns who live there are going to move into the adjacent Masson Pavilion of Hotel Dieu de Montreal.

The existing buildings at the convent will remain as is under a heritage designation, but Mayor Denis Coderre would like to build 100 social housing units on the convent's parking lot.

The Hotel Dieu is also slated for big changes.

Staff and patients at Hotel Dieu are supposed to move to the new CHUM superhospital next June, after the moves from St. Luc and Notre Dame hospitals are complete.

Health Minister Gaetan Barrette has said he would like to transform part of the Hotel Dieu site into a super clinic, while the Health Ministry may move some administrative offices into the property.

Montreal is holding public consultations this week on urban development and seeking feedback on its plans.

So far most participants have said their main concerns are low-cost housing, the environment, and public transit.