MONTREAL - There are plans in the works to bring new life to the area surrounding the Bell Centre in downtown Montreal.

Cadillac-Fairview, a major Toronto-based real-estate developer, says it's ready to spend up to $400 million to build three large condo towers and an office skyscraper just west of the Bell Centre.

The three towers would house 710 units collectively and would stand 27 storeys high, with condominiums, commercial and office space and hotels.

In the midst of a condo boom Mayor Gerald Tremblay says Montreal is bustling with investment of all sorts.

"So it's only normal that Cadillac Fairview says, ‘"Wow there's something happening in Montreal,'" Tremblay says.

Cadillac-Fairview has already spent $150 million on the project and wants to start marketing the residential units by the end of 2011, with hopes of opening the office tower by 2014.

But amid all the excitement is some concern.

Heritage Montreal wants to know what impact the project will have on Windsor Station, inaugurated in 1889.

"Is it going to be a plus for it?" asks Heritage Montreal's Dinu Bumbaru. "This is such a graceful and historic building that the whole project has to pay respect to and enhance, rather than treat it as a side decoration."

Developer Salvatore Iacono says there is no reason to be worried.

"The more viable commercial activity you can bring to an area," he said, "the better you assure that what is heritage-designated remains viable, vibrant, useful."