Montreal puts Cote-St-Paul heritage building up for sale for $1

A heritage building in Montreal's Cote-Saint-Paul neighbourhood that has sat vacant for over a decade is up for sale for $1—but there's a catch.

The buyer of the former town hall and fire station at de l'Eglise Avenue and Angers Street will have to repair and preserve the building's heritage.

"We sell them for one dollar because we want the community to be able to do interesting projects for the community with these buildings," said Emilie Thuillier, the city council's executive committee member for infrastructure and buildings.

It's the first building to hit the market under a new program to revitalize 68 of Montreal's vacant heritage buildings.

Known as Center Saint-Paul, the building is "one of the jewels of heritage interest of the City of Montreal," according to the program's website. Construction on it began in 1910.

The challenge may be finding a buyer willing to invest potentially millions of dollars into repairs in a short time frame to avoid any more decay of the building.

Some residents in the neighbourhood have their own ideas for the future buyer.

"There's no Jean Coutu, Pharmaprix, anything like that on the street or in the immediate neighbourhood," said Matthieu Sossoyan.

"A building for the elderly… that would be ideal," said Michel Paquette.

Heritage Montreal says more needs to be done to preserve this part of Montreal's history.

"We hope the city doesn't just have a wash basin policy...that it washes its hands of buildings it has that are significant for its neighbourhood.. that somehow the city has neglected for years," said its policy director, Dinu Bumbaru.

With no offers on the table yet, the city has extended the deadline to October.

LISTEN ON CJAD 800 RADIO: Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough mayor Emilie Thuillier on sale of former Cote-St-Paul town hall 

-with files from CTV's Keila DePape