A portion of one of the east end’s largest office complexes could be added to a list of federal government properties earmarked for potential conversion into housing.
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A portion of one of the east end’s largest office complexes could be added to a list of federal government properties earmarked for potential conversion into housing.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says it has flagged two of the three buildings at its Montreal Road campus to be screened as candidates for the Canada Public Land Bank – a list of dozens of federally owned real estate assets that could eventually be leased to developers.
CMHC owns all three buildings at its headquarters at 700 Montreal Rd., which include a total of about 425,000 square feet of office space.
The two smallest buildings – Building A, which has a total of 165,933 square feet, and Building B, which covers 56,805 square feet – no longer house any of the Crown corporation’s employees.
Building C, which is the largest property at about 205,000 square feet, “meets all of CMHC’s operational needs,” said Monique LaPlante, a spokesperson for the housing agency, in an email to OBJ earlier this month.
A daycare centre now occupies a small amount of space in Building A, while a single tenant leases 9,175 square feet in Building B.
CMHC hired an external firm to “assess what would be needed to separate Building A, Building B and Building C to work independently from each other,” LaPlante said. The firm completed its initial study last November.
As a result of that work, Buildings A and B were identified as Crown-owned properties that will be reviewed as potential candidates for the land bank, LaPlante said.
That review is slated to be completed later this year. LaPlante said the final decision on whether to include the properties in the land bank “remains with CMHC.”
A CMHC spokesperson told OBJ in October 2023 that vacating the buildings was part of “an initiative to modernize” the way employees work “by redesigning, consolidating and renovating” the agency’s work sites.
At the time, the Crown corporation said it was still “considering how best to align the use of these buildings with CMHC’s mandate and objectives.”
CMHC shopped a large chunk of the office complex to potential tenants. In October 2023, an online listing from BGIS, the organization that manages more than 21 million square feet of federally owned real estate in the National Capital Region, indicated there was space available for lease in all three buildings at 700 Montreal Rd. – including nearly 140,000 square feet in Building A, 52,600 square feet in Building B, and about 41,000 square feet on two empty floors in Building C.
Now, it appears that Buildings A and B could be among a growing number of federally owned office properties that will eventually be repurposed as residential complexes.
The federal government launched the land bank last August as a means to pinpoint assets that could be used for housing. As of the end of January, 90 properties were listed in the land bank, including 35 in the National Capital Region.
The initiative is part of the government’s long-term plan to reduce its office footprint by up to 50 per cent. Former military bases, Canada Post sites and federal office buildings are among the properties currently included in the public lands bank, many of which were previously set aside for sale as they are no longer in use.
In Ottawa, the list includes five properties at Tunney’s Pasture, the Jackson Building at 122 Bank St., L’Esplanade Laurier on Bank Street, 552 Booth St., Edward Drake Building (the former CBC building) at 1500 Bronson Ave., 2670 Riverside Dr. in Hogs Back, the Sir Charles Tupper Building at 2720 Riverside Dr., 875 Heron Rd. in Alta Vista, Federal Study Centre at 1495 Heron Rd., National Defence Medical Centre at 1745 Alta Vista Dr., five sites at 470 Tremblay Rd. near the St. Laurent Shopping Centre, 599 Tremblay Rd. near St. Laurent Shopping Centre, the former CFB Rockcliffe site at 370 Codd’s Rd. and 800 Winisik St., and the former CFB Rockcliffe site at Tawadina Road and Wanaki Road.
The plan is to offer most of the properties for long-term lease rather than one-time sale to keep the lands in public hands and ensure housing built on them remains affordable.
The move comes as Canada grapples with a housing crisis driven largely by high interest rates and rapid immigration in recent years that exceeded housing supply growth.
Last April, the federal government said it intends to spur construction of 3.87 million new housing units by 2031.
– With files from The Canadian Press
