Social agencies feeling development squeeze for offices on LRT line

KITCHENER — When Ruth Cameron saw the newspaper story detailing the sale of an office building on King Street West, she knew the Aids Committee of Cambridge Kitchener Waterloo and Area needed a new home.

Cameron is the director of the nonprofit social agency at 641 King St. West that helps people with HIV, and helps prevent the spread of the virus with several outreach programs. The agency, which goes by the acronym ACCKWA, has to find new offices by year’s end.

The light rail line runs in front of the offices. A developer bought the building as it assembled 2.4 hectares of land for a major, mixed-use development that will run from the railway tracks to Wellington Street South. The landlord who sold the building had not informed Cameron of the deal, and she read about it the newspaper.

As property values increase near the LRT corridor, the long list of social agencies in downtown Kitchener could be in the same position as ACCKWA, which is the first to be displaced by LRT-related development.

Cameron said ACCKWA needs about 2,500-square-feet of space for offices, meeting rooms and private areas for one-on-one consultations. And it needs to be wheelchair accessible, and close to public transit.

ACCKWA wants to remain in or near central Kitchener, because that’s where its clientele is located along with other social services, said Cameron.

“We have to worry about affordability as a small nonprofit,” said Cameron.

ACCKWA was established 30 years ago. It helps 230 people living with HIV and outreach programs for more than 15,000 people. It runs a needle-exchange program, which provided 193,327 clean syringes to intravenousdrug users in 2015-2016. It also collects used syringes in puncture proof containers. It hands out condoms to at-risk groups, among many other services.

“We are definitely eager to partner with other nonprofits, or private business owners, who would like to help us find an appropriate space,” said Cameron.

That may prove difficult, according to a veteran of the nonprofit sector in downtown Kitchener. Joe Mancini has headed up The Working Centre for more than 20 years, and remembers when the social agency bought its first building at 58 Queen St. South in 1995.

Later, it then bought 43 Queen St. South. Back then buildings like that sold for about $200,000. When The Working Centre bought its latest building at 256 King St. West, it paid about three times that amount.

“It is pretty clear that those kinds of opportunities are pretty limited right now,” said Mancini. “Not only that, but the reality is the space that is available is going to be much higher in rent.”

There is another small, nonprofit agency that recently gave up on finding space in the central part of the city because it was too expensive, he said.

“I think that is part of the reality, groups will not so much be downtown, they are going to end up on the periphery, the outside areas,” said Mancini.

Developers are assembling land in and around the downtown, particularly in the west end around Victoria Street and King Street, the future site of the central transit station.

A new condo was recently announced for the corner of Charles and Gaukel streets as development pressure begins to move eastward.

“It will definitely present a financial challenge with the rapid development that is happening in the core and along the LRT line,” said Cameron of ACCKWA’s search for new offices.

Coun. Frank Etherington, who represents much of the downtown, believes someone should be monitoring the displacement of social agencies.

ACCKWA is currently located in a spot that is prime for redevelopment. In addition to the LRT line, it is very close to Google’s Canadian engineering headquarters, and a few minutes’ walk to the future site of the central transit station.

“I hope that is not going to be the start of a trend, because we have more than our share of social agencies downtown,” Etherington said.

Most of the stops along the LRT line are located in central Kitchener, and developers are looking for sites fronting on it or within a few minutes’ walk. And they are paying top dollar for those properties.

“It is going to be hard to resist when you are offered that kind of money,” said Etherington.