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Heritage groups are angered by Ville Marie borough’s decision to open a public register in the middle of the summer to give opponents of a proposal to demolish part of the landmark Maison Alcan on Sherbrooke St. W. and erect a 30-storey commercial tower their only chance to force a referendum and block the project.

That’s after the borough’s public notification for the project and register consisted of a sign in front of the complex and a legal notice on its website and in Montreal’s smallest-circulation daily newspaper, Le Devoir, with an accompanying map that was too small to distinguish streets.

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Over in LaSalle, residents are furious for the opposite reason, having already defeated in a register three years ago a developer’s proposal to turn a disused industrial site into a nine-storey, 755-unit residential complex.

But the project is back, and this time LaSalle borough council has invoked a clause in the city charter that allows it to bypass the public register by sending the now eight-storey and 786-unit Îlot Wanklyn project to the Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM) for citywide public hearings instead.