Windmill Development Group has tapped longtime executive Jeremy Reeds to lead the company as it rolls out an ambitious development pipeline that includes 12 projects and more than 2,000 residential units. Reeds has held various senior leadership roles for more than six years at the Ottawa firm best-known for launching the Zibi mixed-use riverfront development. […]
Windmill Development Group has tapped longtime executive Jeremy Reeds to lead the company as it rolls out an ambitious development pipeline that includes 12 projects and more than 2,000 residential units.
Reeds has held various senior leadership roles for more than six years at the Ottawa firm best-known for launching the Zibi mixed-use riverfront development. After serving as chief financial officer since 2020 and president for the past two-and-a-half years, Reeds is replacing Jonathan Westeinde as CEO.
Westeinde, who founded Windmill in 2003, is transitioning to the role of executive chair of the company’s board of directors. The move is part of a long-term plan to prepare Windmill for the next stage of its evolution, Westeinde told OBJ in a recent interview.
“You always hear how people always forget to plan (for) succession,” the veteran real estate developer said. “We might have planned a little early, but part of that's when the right person and the right timing comes along, and so with Jeremy we sort of made plans five years ago (about) how this would work. We've been pretty much right on the clock.”
For Reeds, the promotion is the next step in a real estate career that began nearly 15 years ago when the Carleton University commerce grad joined Minto Group as a senior accountant. He eventually became the firm’s director of finance for investor reporting, a role he held for three years before joining Windmill in 2019.
“Although you could argue we started from a family business base, the intent is to kind of structure this so it can be multi-generational in thinking,” Westeinde explained. “There's not this notion of how we can build (a company) and flip it. It's really, how can we just sustain and grow this platform and continue to … grow so it can probably cycle through a few leaders down the road.”
Reeds “brings a wealth of experience that makes him, I think, better at the core job of running the development side of things,” Westeinde said, adding the shift to executive chair will give him more time to focus on “longer-term strategy things, strategic partners, investments and … other related entities that help sort of fuel our broader growth.”
Reeds’s promotion comes as Windmill is about to embark on a number of major development projects in Ontario.
The firm, which has offices in Ottawa and Toronto, is a trailblazer in various green building methods that include constructing multi-residential developments from cross-laminated timber, a specially engineered wood that proponents say has a lower carbon footprint than traditional building materials such as cement.
In Toronto, for example, Windmill is partnering with Leader Lane Developments to build a nine-storey, 58-unit rental apartment complex that will be the tallest pre-fabricated mass timber residential structure in the province when it’s completed this summer.
In Ottawa, meanwhile, Windmill is planning to construct two rental apartment complexes of 12 and 18 storeys out of mass timber on a two-acre parcel of land owned by the National Capital Commission at 1460 Riverside Dr., near Alta Vista Drive.
Windmill will serve as development manager for the project, which is expected to include 400 residential units and would be the largest mass timber development in Canada, according to Westeinde.
Partnerships 'a high priority'
One of Windmill’s trademarks is its willingness to bring in other partners that have expertise in areas such as sustainable development and affordable housing.
To that end, one of the buildings on Riverside Drive will be owned by Nesting Ground, an Ottawa-based non-profit corporation that works with community housing organizations and private developers to build affordable housing, while the other building will be owned by Ottawa Community Housing.
In addition, B.C.-based Intelligent City, which specializes in pre-fabricated urban housing using digital design, robotics and other advanced techniques, will provide many of the components for the project. Intelligent City also collaborated with Windmill on the mass timber development in Toronto, manufacturing and installing infrastructure such as columns and parapets.
As construction costs have skyrocketed over the past few years, it’s become more important for developers to find partners who can share the burden and bring their own strengths to each project, Reeds said.
“We're fortunate that we've always approached those relationships and partnerships as a high priority,” he added.
“For the next quite a few years, the real estate industry needs these partnership strategies and collaboration, and it's new for most groups. We're fortunate that we've been playing in that space for a long time. So a lot of it comes naturally, but it really requires a lot of innovative thinking and bringing all the different groups together.
“What has allowed us to be successful in a lot of these partnerships is just being able to pause and accept that the way things used to be doesn't necessarily mean that is how it has to be going forward. And the more you can challenge that and think openly about it, the more you can help solve those problems and try to figure out how those different groups can work together to get the outcomes that we need.”
While mass timber construction is not widely used in multi-residential projects, Reeds and Westeinde say it’s poised to move into the mainstream as the technology evolves and becomes more affordable.
Building codes now allow timber buildings of up to 30 storeys, Reeds noted, adding wood lends itself well to modular construction — an increasingly popular approach to development in which various components of a building’s structure, such as columns and floor cassettes, are manufactured in mass quantities off-site and assembled later.
Modular construction is more efficient, Westeinde explained, estimating it can shorten timelines on a typical multi-residential project by three to four months.
More rental towers coming
“The more you're able to kind of build in a controlled environment, the more you can focus on how you can get your cost curves down, versus sort of always being a piecemeal (construction process) on every site,” he said.
Meanwhile, Windmill has a series of other projects in its development pipeline in Ottawa, Toronto and Guelph, including a partnership with a non-profit housing co-operative in Toronto that Westeinde says will be the largest affordable housing co-operative in the province with more than 900 units.
Here in Ottawa, Windmill is launching a pair of new rental apartment complexes in conjunction with Nesting Ground, Ottawa Community Housing and the Perley Health Foundation that will include units that offer specialized support services for seniors.
“There aren’t many options where you can get (seniors) care in apartment-style living at a reasonable cost,” Westeinde said.
One of the local projects calls for three buildings on Regina Street near Lincoln Fields. The two-acre property is currently home to Parkway House, a non-profit organization that houses adults with physical disabilities who require 24-7 care.
The plan includes two highrises of 28 and 16 storeys, as well as a seven-storey building that will feature a new home for Parkway House on the ground floor and six storeys of rental apartment units on the floors above.
The other development is a 24-storey rental apartment tower on the corner of Arlington Avenue and Bell Street, just north of the Queensway.
The half-acre parcel of land was previously home to the Ottawa Korean Community Church, which Windmill purchased in 2021. The 294-unit development will incorporate the church’s west and north facades into its design.
All of the units in Windmill’s current pipeline are targeted at renters. Economic uncertainty and geopolitical turbulence have caused developers to back away from condos, Reeds explained.
“You can't launch and sell a condo project in most major cities right now just due to that, and it's likely going to take 18 to 24 months before that shakes out and rebalances,” he noted, adding Ottawa is “a bit different” than other markets such as Toronto and Vancouver where condo developers cater more to investors.
“We're fortunate that most of our condo projects are targeted more towards end users. So when we do think about it, it is very much more in that end-user product offering, but it just needs that market certainty to return.” 
