Building owners are aiming to add hundreds of rental units to the capital region’s tight market by converting a James Bay hotel to apartments and by rebuilding at an existing site in View Royal.
As well, a proposal to develop condominiums at the Medical Arts building at Cook Street and Pandora Avenue is in the works.
Repurposing buildings and building sites is an increasingly popular way to add to the region’s housing stock.
Realstar Group of Toronto is proposing to build 520 new rental apartment units on its 15.8-acre peninsula jutting into Portage Inlet, company vice-president Heather Grey-Wolf said Monday. They would be in buildings from four to nine storeys tall.
The development would replace 161 units in buildings built in 1964, she said.
Realstar is holding an open house at View Royal Town Hall, 45 View Royal Ave., on Thursday from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Community input will shape the proposal, she said. “It is very early days in terms of our plans.”
Building in phases is being considered to minimize disruption to residents, Grey-Wolf said. Rental rates have not been set. Only land that has been built upon and already disturbed would be used, she said. A key aim of the plan is “respecting the natural and cultural heritage of the site,” she said.
View Royal Mayor David Screech said the site includes First Nations middens.
A rezoning would be required. No application has gone to the municipality yet.
“It is wonderful to see that volume of rental units being proposed because as a region we desperately need them,” he said.
Renters are having a tough time in the capital region, with a vacancy rate hovering around one per cent, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. statistics.
In the latest move to transform a hotel into rental use, plans call for Harbour Towers Hotel and Suites, 345 Quebec St., to be developed into 219 rental units, up from 189 hotel rooms, said Doug Vincent, spokesman for Omicron, which is representing owner Harbour Towers Ltd. of Vancouver.
“The hotel has not been renovated in over 20 years,” he said.
However, the possibility of retaining the building as a hotel remains. Another study, not by Omicron, is being carried out on the viability of renovating the suites, he said.
In any case, Vincent said he plans to submit a proposal to the City of Victoria next month, after receiving feedback from the James Bay Neighbourhood Association. “I think it will be good because it will relieve a lot of rental,” said Marg Gardiner, association president. “Bringing on 219 rentals is a major influx of housing.”
The smallest unit would be 279 square feet, the largest 1,200 square feet. The proposal includes 179 parking stalls.
Harbour Towers would follow other hotels that have switched to rental. Queen Victoria Hotel, 655 Douglas St., was bought by Concert Properties and converted to Q Apartments with 124 units. Dominion Rocket, the former Dominion Hotel at 759 Yates St., offers rental micro-units including furnished studios.
Local developers Max Tomaszewski and David Price of Amadon-Westwater Projects Inc. are planning to gut the Medical Arts building and build an adjacent four-storey building, on what is now a parking lot, to create 109 condominium units. It will be called The Wade, after original architect Wade Stockdill Armour Architects, who designed the 1950s building. Its modernist design and sturdy concrete construction will be featured in the old and new buildings.
Half the units will be between 700 and 800 square feet, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Another 30 per cent will be smaller, and 20 per cent will be two bedroom and a den.
The City of Victoria issued a development permit in June. Excavation is to start in 2017 with the project completed by December 2018, Tomaszewski said.
— With a file from Bill Cleverley
