The owners of a mixed-use building in Centretown are proposing to convert three floors into rental apartments in a move that would accelerate a recent trend of replacing empty downtown office space with other uses. In a site plan application recently filed with the city, Bank and Cooper Property Ltd. says it’s looking at turning […]
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The owners of a mixed-use building in Centretown are proposing to convert three floors into rental apartments in a move that would accelerate a recent trend of replacing empty downtown office space with other uses.
In a site plan application recently filed with the city, Bank and Cooper Property Ltd. says it’s looking at turning the top three floors of the four-storey, 29,000-square-foot building at the southeast corner of Bank and Cooper streets into 33 rental suites.
The proposal calls for 14 residential parking spaces, down from the current total of 20 at the 0.35-acre site, and 33 bicycle parking spots. Part of the existing parking lot would be replaced with an 1,800-square-foot outdoor amenity space to help meet zoning requirements that call for a minimum of about 2,000 square feet of public activity space at buildings that are converted from office to residential use.
Commercial space on the ground floor that’s currently occupied by a Tim Hortons outlet and a photography shop would be retained.
The remaining three floors, which mostly consist of vacant offices and a co-working space, would be remodelled into one- and two-bedroom apartments, the application says. The developer says it expects at least 10 per cent of the units would be designated as affordable housing.
The owners say they don’t plan to make any changes to the building’s exterior facade.
The site is zoned for traditional mainstreet use, meaning no amendments are required for a conversion. The owners argue the plan aligns with the city’s goal of creating easily walkable “15-minute neighbourhoods” in high-density transit nodes and is more economical and environmentally friendly than tearing down the existing building and replacing it with a new one.
The proposal “reuses an underused office building that otherwise has a long lifespan,” the site plan application prepared by RorTar Land Development Consultants says, adding the “resources required to convert the building to residential are significantly less than constructing a new building.”
Still, while an application to convert the property from office to residential use has been filed, there’s no guarantee the building will end up being turned into a rental complex.
Constructed in 1962, the class-C property is currently for sale at an asking price of $9.3 million.
Commercial real estate broker Marc Morin, who is marketing the building at 263 Bank St. on behalf of the current owners, told OBJ this summer the building has been “substantially upgraded” since the current owners purchased it in 2012 and remains a viable asset in its current state.
But Morin, the president of Seva Commercial Real Estate, also said the 63-year-old structure would be “ideally suited to a residential conversion” down the road, adding a new buyer might “look at ground-up development in the long term” should it suit their needs.
Bank and Slater’s proposal adds to a growing list of potential residential conversions in downtown Ottawa as demand for office space shrinks.
It comes just a couple of months after another local real estate firm, KTS Properties, filed a plan to turn an eight-storey, 55,000-square-foot office building at the corner of Bronson and Carling avenues into a 70-unit rental complex with ground-floor retail space.
KTS is also in the process of converting another former office tower at 130 Slater St. into a 204-unit apartment building. Other companies with conversion projects in the pipeline include CLV Group, which is gutting the Narono Building at 360 Laurier Ave. W. and replacing its former offices with 139 rental apartment units, and District Realty, which is redeveloping an 11-storey office building at 200 Elgin St. into a multi-residential complex.
