Office building to go up on site of adult rec centre
Perimeter Development submits winning bid for King Street South property in Waterloo
WATERLOO — A seven-storey office building with a plaza, roof deck and ground-floor retail is planned for the site of the Adult Recreation Centre in Waterloo.
Waterloo council was expected to approve the sale of the property to the Perimeter Development Corp. on Monday. The Kitchenerbased company will pay $4.28 million for a 0.89-acre piece of land that had been valued at $2.78 million.
“We have an offer that is 55 per cent over the appraised value, that is good news for the city,” Mayor Dave Jaworsky said.
The Adult Recreation Centre will move to the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex, on Father David Bauer Drive, and will be expanded. Construction of the office building is slated to begin in 2021, after the centre has been relocated. Proceeds from the sale of the property will be used to help pay for the new centre. At no point will the city be without the programs or services of the adult centre, Jaworsky said.
“That was most important to our council,” he said.
By selling the property now, the city ensures that the developer has time for detailed planning and approvals. The city also has time to plan and build a new adult centre, the mayor said.
The property, at 185 King St. S., is at the southern entrance to uptown Waterloo. It is next to the Hip Development’s condo project, Circa 1877, that sold out in two days. The area immediately around the Allen Street light rail transit stop is undergoing intense redevelopment, more so than any other LRT station.
“The Allen Station has experienced rapid intensification,” said Ryan Mounsey, the city’s senior economic development adviser.
The area around the station has seen $215 million in new development, and another $135 million proposed.
The city wanted an office building on the site. It has lost more than 55 acres of employment lands since 1990 with the closing of plants such as Canbar, Seagram, Labatt’s, SunarHauserman and Bauer Industries, and the move of Brick Brewing. Condos, townhomes, a seniors residence, the recreation complex and the Centre for International Governance Innovation now occupy those former employment sites.
Jaworsky said the uptown needs more office space to create a city core where people can live, work and play. Shopify Plus has leased much of the available office space in uptown Waterloo, and startups that outgrow the Communitech Data Hub on Erb Street will be looking for homes.
“We need places for these companies to go,” Jaworsky said. “We wanted to see at least 80,000 square feet of office space on this site.”
Perimeter plans a seven-storey building with room for five retail outlets on the ground floor. The total building area is 97,000 square feet, and it will contain 87,468 square feet of office space, enough for 650 jobs.
The Perimeter proposal calls for a LEED Gold building, one of the highest ratings for energy efficiency and sustainability, Mounsey said.
“It represents the highest standard of urban design among the submissions,” he said. “It includes a roof deck, an outdoor plaza, active street frontages with five retail stores and a prominent main entrance on Allen Street.”
Four local developers submitted bids after the property was listed in March: Perimeter, Hip, Lexington Park Real Estate Capital and VanMar Constructors.
The city had several objectives in mind with the sale of the property: attract development that will support jobs, promote two-way GO Transit service to Toronto and create a sense of place at a major entrance to the downtown.
Perimeter Development is well known in Kitchener-Waterloo.
It upgraded and restored the Walper Hotel at 117 King St. W. and is renovating the main floor of 276 King St. W., which is the main floor of the Eaton Lofts building. It has started construction on the first new office building in downtown Kitchener in a generation at 345 King St. W. It is proposing a 10-floor office building on Breithaupt Street, across from Google’s Canadian engineering headquarters. As well, it redeveloped the old factory where Google is located.