Canadian National Railway will relocate its headquarters to a major Kevric Real Estate Corporation office redevelopment project in downtown Montreal.

The property, known as 600 DLG, is located at 600 De La Gauchetière West, north of Square Victoria in the International Quarter. The redevelopment project is underway.

CN will occupy the building’s first 18 floors under a 20-year lease. The space totals about 440,000 square feet. The company will officially start occupying the building in 2028, with some departments moving in beforehand in 2026.

In the second of a multi-part interview, Sébastien Hylands, vice-president of development for Montreal-based Kevric, tells Connect about the status of the project and elaborates on some of its sustainable features.

In the first part, he explained how the deal with CN came about.

What is the status of the redevelopment now?

We launched the envelope transformation project, so we’re really ripping out the entire exterior of the building to build a new one. And, this is being done by a suspended platform that’s been assembled. It’s actually the first time it’s ever been done like this.

So, the platform surrounds the entire building, and basically goes floor by floor to do all the transformation work on the envelope. We’re about roughly halfway done on the tower. We’re going to be finishing up all the envelope work by the end of ’25, at which point that platform is going to be disassembled.

At the same time, we’ve launched the transformation of the ground floor, so the podium floor is meeting the ground floor, concourse floor, and the low grade floors to really do a new entrance that’s focused on Square Victoria and on Beaver Hall.

Right now, the building is in full transformation. National Bank moved out at the end of last year, and we are going out that project full steam. I mean, we’re really right in the middle of the transformation of that redevelopment.

And, other tenants are remaining in the building while you’re doing the work?

Yes, that’s how we’ve designed that project. One of the reasons why we’re taking this approach of ripping out the envelope and replacing the envelope using the suspended structure, which is suspended from the roof, is so that the occupants of the building are staying in place. Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton — CGT for short — Alten Canada and Logistec Corporation are staying inside their spaces, and they can actually keep working in their spaces while we are transforming the envelope, because this suspended structure is actually an enclosed structure that surrounds the building.

Meaning that we can keep working when there’s a snowstorm. We can keep working when it’s pouring rain outside without disturbing the people sitting inside the building so that they’re never exposed to the the outdoor elements.

Who is doing that redevelopment work for you?

We’ve hired JCB Construction, so we have a general contract that is co-ordinating all of that. But we’ve been heavily involved just, because of the very particular nature of this transformation, in putting together the project and the logistics around it.

What are some of the redevelopment’s sustainable features?

We’ve actually applied a pretty pretty novel approach to it. We’re quantifying with the experts, that we were able to find, the carbon emissions related to our transformation work, so all the carbon emissions related to the new materials that we’re putting on the replacement of the envelope, the transportation, the manufacturing, the actual work going on on site.

So, we know exactly the volume of CO2 emissions related to that. But we’ve also quantified the equivalent new construction so that we could, essentially, very confidently demonstrate to prospective tenants the avoided emissions by choosing 600 DLG rather than a new construction. That essentially allowed us to demonstrate that we’re avoiding 70% of the carbon emissions of a new building while delivering the same quality of a building and the same quality of office space in downtown Montreal.

We’ve actually committed to offsetting that residual amount that we are emitting as part of our project so that organizations that choose to come to our 600 DLG tower are making a carbon-neutral real estate move, which is most likely going to be aligned with their corporate priorities towards fighting climate change and limiting the environmental impacts of them doing business.

We know that we are one of the first organizations in North America who are going really as far as this in terms of demonstrating how we’ve optimized the value sphere and the impact of this project.

How will the building be powered and heated?

In Quebec, we’re extremely lucky by the fact that the vast majority of our energy grid is powered by hydroelectricity which, by its nature, is extremely clean energy. The building is heated using the district energy network that’s here in Montreal. We decarbonize the heating steam that essentially goes through around 30% to 40% of all downtown buildings in Montreal. Our volume of steam is actually generated with clean energy sources rather than the combustion of fossil fuels.

We’ve really used the project as an enabler: To be able to not just focus on what’s happening within our four walls, but what’s actually being fed into our four walls from the energy sources we’re consuming, to make sure that we clean them up to the extent that we can.

Is there any water reuse or anything like that?

That’s a good question. The building does not have that as a system. What we are doing though, as part of the redevelopment, since we’re doing pretty massive transformations: We are taking the opportunity to do some water retention on site to really help when there’s massive downpours. essentially, we’re building a very large chamber, which unloads the municipal infrastructure, and that’s being incorporated in the project and is being built as we speak right now.

Rendering: Courtesy of Kevric Corporation

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