When it comes to the merits of turning obsolete offices into residential complexes, Jason Shinder doesn’t need to be converted – he’s already a believer. Shinder is CEO of District Realty, which pioneered the concept of transforming aging office spaces into rental housing in Ottawa more than a decade ago when it converted the top […]
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When it comes to the merits of turning obsolete offices into residential complexes, Jason Shinder doesn’t need to be converted – he’s already a believer.
Shinder is CEO of District Realty, which pioneered the concept of transforming aging office spaces into rental housing in Ottawa more than a decade ago when it converted the top five floors of a building at 169 Lisgar St. into bachelor, one- and two-bedroom apartments.
Since then, the firm has notched two more conversions on its belt: an eight-storey building at 170 Metcalfe St. that it repurposed as apartments several years ago, and its latest project, the redevelopment of an 11-storey former office building at 200 Elgin St. into more than 120 rental units that’s expected to be finished this fall.
Now, Shinder and his team are sizing up another potential conversion at 25 Nicholas St., near the corner of Rideau Street.
District acquired part of the 21-storey building in January, buying floors 10 through 21 as well as half of the ground floor from the Properties Group for $30 million. The Department of National Defence currently occupies most of that space, which totals about 150,000 square feet, on a lease that expires next January but includes an option for DND to renew.
Public Services and Public Procurement Canada, which manages the federal government’s office real estate portfolio, has until the end of May to make up its mind about the renewal. Shinder says regardless of what the feds decide to do, he’s happy with his firm’s latest purchase.
“I’m not looking at this as a two-year play or a three-year play,” he says. “In the fullness of time, whether it’s office or whether it’s apartments, I like it as both. At the end of the day, we just love the location. I define it as just being good concrete.”
In Shinder’s view, there’s a lot to like about the building, which was constructed in 1989.
For example, District has an agreement to share amenities with the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, which operates under separate ownership on the first nine floors. That means tenants would have access to perks like a pool, gym and an outdoor courtyard.
In addition, he says the site’s proximity to the Rideau Centre and its light-rail stop, the University of Ottawa and the ByWard Market would make it an ideal address for students and young professionals.
“It always looked like a good place to live,” he says. “It has all the characteristics to be a good home for somebody. It’s versatile as a location – it can be a hotel, it can be an office, it can be an apartment building. Any of the above, it will be a good location where the occupant will be happy.”
Still, like some other local developers who are currently eyeing potential office-to-residential conversions, Shinder is keeping a close eye on where the rental market is heading – and that trajectory will ultimately determine his plans for Nicholas Street.
Two years ago, when his firm began tearing out the guts of 200 Elgin, conversions were all the rage in the National Capital Region.
As tenants fled class-B and C office space in droves in the wake of the pandemic, turning empty suites into rental apartments became an increasingly attractive proposition for landlords and developers looking for better uses for such buildings.
Besides District, other firms such as CLV Group and Katasa Group snapped up large, sparsely occupied downtown office buildings with the goal of repurposing them.
The spate of conversions coincided with a surge in new apartment construction as a rise in immigration and a flood of post-secondary students after COVID restrictions were lifted fuelled greater demand for rental units than landlords could handle.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., there were a record-high 11,000 new rental apartment units under construction in Ottawa at the end of December, up from just over 4,000 two years earlier.
But all those new builds came just as the federal government began to clamp down on immigration and reduced the number of foreign students it allowed into the country – slamming the door on a significant chunk of the rental market’s biggest customer base.
Consequently, Ottawa’s rental apartment vacancy rate rose to three per cent in 2025, CMHC says, up from 2.6 per cent in 2024 and 2.1 per cent the previous year. And the vacancy rate for newer units built after 2015 was even higher at 6.7 per cent.
