New apartment block planned for Lansdowne
The developer who plans to tear down the Pig’s Ear for an apartment building says he’s got another project to do first: two new apartment/condo buildings on vacant land he owns along Lansdowne Street West.
Paul Dietrich, the owner of Parkview Homes, wants to put the buildings at 1633 Lansdowne St., just west of Spillsbury Drive (near Holiday Ford, on the same side of the street).
He’s owned the land for 15 years. With the apartment vacancy rate stuck at one per cent, he said, it’s time to develop it.
“This is definitely much-needed,” he said.
His concept plans — from local architect Neil Campbell, of Aside Architects — show a five-storey building and a six-storey building.
That plan would include 200 apartments and condos, Dietrich said, with commercial space on the ground floor (health care services or a daycare, perhaps).
It would all cost about $35 million to build, Dietrich said — although he’s willing to invest
$50 million if council allows him to build 10 storeys high.
That would double the number of apartments and condos to 400 in total, he said.
The challenge would be parking: although he’s planning underground parking for tenants and surface parking for the commercial space, the city may require more parking spots than he has land.
But Dietrich thinks there are ways around that: tenants who take their cars to work could potentially leave their parking spots for commercial use during the day, for example.
The land is already serviced, Dietrich says, but he needs a rezoning to allow residences (it’s zoned commercial).
He’ll apply for that rezoning before city council in the spring or summer of 2019, he said, and he expects it to take three to four years to construct the buildings.
He’s still planning on razing the Pig’s Ear and putting apartments there too. He’s not sure when that might happen, however.
“It depends on the city’s appetite for intensification,” Dietrich said, adding that it might be spelled out in the city’s new Official Plan, due next year.
In 2017, council considered putting a heritage designation on the Pig’s Ear Tavern but then didn’t go through with it. Dietrich holds a demolition permit on the building.
He’s also planning to convert the former Ecole Monseigneur-Jamot on Romaine St. into 44 condos.
He still needs a building permit and site plan approvals for that project.