Aaron Usatch has been planning and visualizing the reinvention of his family’s downtown Victoria building for 16 years. And though the gutted structure he walks through these days still seems miles away from completion, it’s clear that at least he can see the finish line.
Work on seismic upgrading and foundation repair is continuing at 538 Yates St., the home of the family’s Carnaby Street clothing store for 40 years before it closed in 2006, but Usatch sees it coming together.
“We’ve been under construction since we received our building permits in early February, though pre-construction work started in February 2012, and I expect we should be completed and ready for occupancy in September,” Usatch said.
The timing seems ambitious, but then again so is the project.
The Usatch family is spending $2.5 million to reinvent the historic T.B. Pearson and Coy building, which was built in 1910. His family has owned it for 56 years.
The project, which stripped the building down to its bricks, will see a modernized interior and systems with commercial space on the ground floor and some commercial space on the second floor with a single rental residential unit. An additional one and a half storeys will be added to the roof for three rental units.
The residential rentals will range between 1,250 and 1,350 square feet.
The additions will be set back from the roofline to maintain the heritage look of the structure.
“The idea is I want to honour the heritage of the building, but provide for a more contemporary interpretation,” he said.
Usatch is a firm believer in reclaiming the heritage buildings of the downtown core, and is following in the footsteps of developers like Michael Williams and Chris Le Febvre, who have brought new life to some of the older structures in the area.
Usatch said he buys into the driving motto of the Civic Heritage Trust that bringing back the buildings brings the people back as well. “It’s true. I grew up in Victoria in this neighbourhood, in this building. When I was a kid, all the second floors around here were vacant, and now you walk downtown and see old buildings that have been upgraded and have people living in them. They are bringing back downtown Victoria. That’s very exciting,” Usatch said.
He noted a combination of low-interest financing and city grants for heritage maintenance and improvement made it the right time to rebuild the structure.
Usatch said the second floor’s commercial space will be filled by Ferris’ Oyster Bar, which will expand its second-floor from the neighbouring building.
[Part of the second floor of 528 Yates St.
will accommodate an expansion of Ferris’s Oyster Bar.]
Usatch said he has already signed tenants for two of the residential units. The residential portion is being called the Carnaby Street Residences.
He said the main floor, which has about 2,400 square feet of space and a footprint of about 3,600 square feet, is available for any manner of commercial tenant. But first the building has to be finished.
An optimistic Usatch expects work to kick into high gear soon. “As soon as the main components [seismic and final foundation] are in, we can really go to town [and] start framing inside ... we are very close to that.”
