Québec City, Quebec, Canada

Neighbouring the historic district of Old Quebec and more particularly Place Royale, the Old Port encompasses an area rich in history and symbolic of the traditional environment of port and maritime activities. This territory, covering some 33 hectares, is made up of two distinct entities: the Louise Basin and Pointe-à-Carcy, which borders the St. Lawrence River.

By the end of 1987, the Government of Canada will have disbursed more than $100 million to ensure the redevelopment of this area. Most of the investment has, to date, been for infrastructure work, amounting to several tens of millions of dollars. At the same time, the development of building plans and specifications has continued at an accelerated pace and most are currently underway. We expect them to be completed in time for the international event commemorating the 450th anniversary of Jacques Cartier's arrival in Canada.

In addition to the infrastructure work carried out throughout the territory, the investments made will have focused mainly on the Pointe-à-Carcy sector. This sector will be animated by commercial, administrative and socio-cultural activities, while the area around the interior Louise basin, which houses a marina with approximately 350 boats, will be mainly devoted to residential purposes.

It is therefore in the Louise Basin sector that the Old Port of Québec Corporation is now concentrating its energies, by coherently planning all the land available for housing around the inner Louise Basin. To do so, we plan to solicit the interest of private enterprise through a public request for development proposals. We hope to have the first housing units under construction by the fall of 1984. Furthermore, given our role as developer and coordinator of public and private investments, we do not want to abandon the qualitative control of residential development to private enterprise and we wish to provide ourselves with a mechanism that would ensure such control, while allowing a certain latitude
of realization.

This is all the more critical given:
(a) The inability of the market to absorb several hundred housing units in one phase;
b) The Corporation's desire to attract the interest of a large number of developers
c) the limited capacity of regional developers to bear financial risk
(d) the need to ensure phased development while maintaining consistency across multiple developers.

Aware of the difficulties imposed by these constraints, the Canada Lands Company (Old Port of Québec) Inc. wishes, through this competition, to develop an image plan covering all the available land around the Louise Basin. The Corporation does not wish to be the project manager, with the exception of the sector planned for the public market, and consequently does not undertake to carry out the project with the firm selected as having presented the best project. However, on the basis of this image plan, the Corporation will invite various private companies operating in the construction and operation of real estate projects to submit proposals to carry out part or all of the project, within the framework that the result of the competition will impose on them. This guide plan will direct and constrain the intervention of private companies interested in the realization of the project.

(From competition brief)

(Unofficial automated translation)