Allyson Beauregard
MUNICIPALITY OF PONTIAC – Twelve years after initially starting his project, André Durocher, the mastermind behind the Pontiac Airpark, recently announced that he has ended the project.
Durocher had hoped to create a fly-in
community which would feature a number of
Allyson Beauregard
MUNICIPALITY OF PONTIAC – Twelve years after initially starting his project, André Durocher, the mastermind behind the Pontiac Airpark, recently announced that he has ended the project.
Durocher had hoped to create a fly-in
community which would feature a number of
residential lots, a club house, and a seaplane base on the Ottawa River in addition to the two
runways already installed at the location; people could build their homes on the project and park their planes in their own hangers next to their houses. “There were sixty residential lots available, but unfortunately, in twelve years I have sold only one lot,” Durocher told the Journal. “In the United States, they
have 800-900 of these communities,” he continued, noting that there is an airplane community in Lachute, Quebec.
The two perpendicular runways were installed in 2011, followed by water aerodrome facilities for floatplanes. In 2012, a parcel of land to the north of the Airpark was acquired; this became the Elevage Fabie equestrian facility, which opened in the fall of 2012. Another 130 acres of land west of the project were purchased in March 2012, and in February 2013, seven more parcels of land, previously belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway line, were acquired.
The approximate 250 acres of land the Airpark was intended to occupy has already been sold; Durocher believes the new owner will “do nothing but sit on it and
wait”, keeping it as an
investment for the future.
