REDESIGN FOR RENTALS
Vacant office building eyed for apartments
A Toronto developer who is the latest in a succession of owners of a long-vacant nine-storey office tower on Ouellette Avenue says he's here to stay with a plan to convert the top eight floors into 80 apartments.
The $3-million project by Trent Lakes Developments is the latest such proposal in the core, as landlords with vacant office space realize there's a near-insatiable demand for housing in Windsor.
That is the scenario at 880 Ouellette, a modern-looking white office tower that was purchased by Trent Lakes for a “very, very good price” in 2019, said president Badar Mahmood. He said the company spent about $500,000 sprucing it up with new paint, new parking lot, cleaned windows and an impressive new lobby, with plans to lease it out as office space.
“But based on our research … we noticed there was not much demand for office in the downtown core, it's more on the rental side,” he said. “People are looking for places to stay. So we decided to move forward and start designing residential apartments.”
The plan still needs to get past city hall approvals, including a rezoning.
“As soon as we get our permits approved and whatnot, we're going to be starting construction the next day,” Mahmood said. “But it's not going to be easy to do this whole project.”
Converting office to residential requires a massive interior overhaul, he said, including major plumbing, mechanical and electrical work. The project will probably take 16 to 18 months.
“A lot of work to be done, a lot of work to be done,” said Mahmood, who estimated his carrying costs (including mortgage and utilities) for the vacant building at $100,000 per month.
He hopes the first floor will remain commercial, but the top eight floors will be residential, with a total of 60,000 square feet of space. Each floor will contain 10 “decent-sized” apartments, a combination of one- and two-bedroom units.
The affordable apartments will be marketed to everyone, said Mahmood, but he assumes students will make up a good proportion of his tenants.
“Eighty apartments, it's a big deal in a place where people don't have a space. They have a space now,” he said.
Ward 3 Coun. Rino Bortolin has been working with Trent Lakes since it purchased 880 Ouellette. It's the third new owner Bortolin has dealt with in recent years.
“With this one, I'm cautiously optimistic,” said Bortolin, who represents the downtown area and has seen hundreds of housing units proposed in the last few years, including for a similar office-to-apartment project at the Canada Building in the 300 block of Ouellette.
While he favours the idea of converting unused office space into badly needed apartments, Bortolin said he wants to make sure the units created aren't all tiny, lowcost units catering to students, because the recent influx of thousands of international students could someday dry up, leaving a glut of units.
“This is an existing building, it's already there, they're changing the use and they're making it residential, which is all good,” he said.
“We just need to make sure we do it right.”
The developers are running into some obstacles at city hall as they go through the approval process, such as the requirement that residential projects provide 1.25 parking spaces per unit. If the building were located three blocks farther north toward the river, parking wouldn't be required at all, Bortolin said. The building has 33 parking spots in back, well short of the 100 required. Bortolin said he's trying to work out a solution, such as finding an off-site parking lot where spaces could be rented.
“We want to get away from all these empty lots that are so prevalent downtown, especially in an area like this,” he said. “He's right on a transit route, he's in the core, a lot of these students will be walking or taking a bus, they won't even own a car.”
The building is located beside the former Windsor Public Library central branch, which was sold to the Downtown Mission in 2018, igniting criticism about the effect of locating services for the homeless on Windsor's main street. That deal went south last year when the Mission flipped the property to a developer. In October, the Mission announced a $7.2-million plan to “get off Ouellette” by consolidating its multiple operations at a single site on Mcdougall Street.
Mahmood said when the Mission was planning to move in next door, his intention was to fix up 880 Ouellette, find some office tenants and flip it to a new buyer. The Mission's decision to locate elsewhere was a determining factor in switching plans.
“We do plan on holding onto it,” he said. “The rental demand is very, very high in Windsor. “I have no doubt in my mind these will be rented out very, very quickly.”
The rental demand is very, very high in Windsor. I have no doubt in my mind these will be rented out very, very quickly.