Developer seeking city grant
Apartments planned for former hospital’s boiler room
The building that once housed the boiler room of the former St. Joseph’s Hospital in East City is about to be converted into 18 apartments, and the developer may get a grant from the city to help.
Developer TVM has applied for funding under the city’s Residential Conversion and Intensification Program, and a new city staff report that city councillors will review Monday recommends a grant of $130,020 (or $8.51 per square foot of new apartment space).
Through its program, the city offers grants of up to $10 per square foot of new residential floor area in a converted building; if this grant is approved, it will leave the city about $1.2 million for this program.
TVM has applied for similar grants before and has received them; the program is designed to offer incentives to redevelop existing buildings into apartments within the built-up areas of Peterborough.
City staff recommends giving this grant, in a new report to city councillors. Councillors will discuss it and vote at a virtual committee meeting on Monday night.
The redevelopment of the former boiler room — a two-storey brick building at 345 Armour Road — will be the final phase of the ongoing conversion of the old hospital into apartments by TVM, which bought the former hospital property in 2009 (a year after Peterborough Regional Health Centre opened).
Previously, TVM had converted other parts of the former St. Joseph’s Hospital on Armour Road and Hunter Street East into apartments and commercial spaces. TVM is also adding East City Condos — a nine-storey building — on the vacant southwest corner of Armour Road and Hunter Street East. Construction on that building began in fall 2020 and is ongoing, with 91 condos in the design.
Water Street
Three new apartment buildings — with a total of 96 apartments — may soon be built across Water Street from the Riverview Park and Zoo.
Developer Triple T Holdings Limited is proposing construction at 1341 Water St.; it’s a two-hectare
vacant property on the west side of Water Street, just north of Carnegie Avenue.
A site plan application — which sets out the arrangement of the buildings, landscaping and parking on the property — will be reviewed by city councillors for the first time on Monday night.
In a report, city planning staff recommend approval of a site plan that calls for a trio of fourstorey buildings designed by local architect Neil Campbell of Aside Architects.
The plan also calls for 165 onsite parking spots (20 of them barrier-free, and three of them with electric vehicle charging capabilities).
There’s another existing townhouse community beside 1341 Water St.; the property is also just east of a newer condominium complex that’s accessed from Centre Line.
The vacant property was historically used as a gravel pit, states a city staff report, but was remediated sometime after 1966 and has been vacant ever since.
In 2018, the previous city council granted a rezoning to Triple T Holdings to allow residential use of the land (which had been zoned for rural use). That meant construction could happen.
Meanwhile, the new report to councillors notes 1341 Water St. is flood-prone, and the developer has been made to meet specific city requirements related to flood mitigation.
The report also notes construction will mean felling the trees from a “significant treecovered area,” but the city has rules whereby developers must plant new trees to replace existing ones.