Renos to Stratford’s ‘Allen’s Alley’ building to include apartments, real estate office

A heritage building in downtown Stratford known for its unique pedestrian gateway to the city’s downtown core will soon be home to more than a dozen residential apartment units and a real estate office, its newest owners say.

Local real estate investors Geoffrey and Rebecca Cheney have purchased 56-62 Wellington St., a very old three-storey building with a trio of ground-floor shops next to Allen’s Alley – the colorful throughway connecting Erie Street to Stratford’s Market Square.

Renovations now underway will create 14 residential apartment units on the building’s upper two floors, the Cheneys said this week. Also included in the blueprints is new office space for the couple’s real estate group and the preservation of the building’s façade, which the pair wants to restore with some financial assistance from city hall.

Geoffrey and Rebecca said they were hunting for office space downtown when the Wellington Street building became available.

“We jumped all over it,” Rebecca said. “It was a little bit bigger than we had planned, but we’re so excited about it. I think its pretty cool, too, that Allen’s Alley is part of the building.”

“Undeniably, this is the heart of Stratford,” Geoffrey added. “We’re also excited about … the humans that are going to come and occupy it and the life it’s going to hopefully bring into (the downtown core).”

The Cheneys found out very little about the roughly 150-year-old building after they purchased it. There is physical evidence the building once stood on Wellington Street by itself, and an old photograph suggests it was originally a hotel.

Thanks to records from the Stratford-Perth Archives, the couple is confident the ground floor was at one time Allen’s Fruit Stand, which could have lead to the nickname given to the nearby alley.

Today, there are three shops at street level: The Little Prince Cinema (a Stratford attraction that recently made its way into the Guinness Book of World Records), a record shop called Sound Fixation, and Dimitri’s Shoe and Leather Repair. There is also the alley, which has been colorfully decorated over the years with murals of notable Stratford artists.

Celebrating the building’s heritage will be important, the Cheneys said. The new group of apartments will be called The Allen. The couple have also applied for two loans and a grant under the city’s Community Improvement Plan, a collection of incentives meant to encourage private investment into the preservation of local heritage buildings.

The funds, which still need to be approved by city council and won’t be released until all the work has been completed and inspected by city staff, will help cover the cost of fixing the façade and bringing the building’s energy efficiency up to modern standards .

That work, Geoffrey and Rebecca said, will include new windows, fixes to the masonry, roof repairs, plumbing, electrical and new ventilation.

“The grant money is definitely going to help us keep as much of the beauty of the building (as we can),” Rebecca said. “Tenants will have heating and cooling, which this building did not have before.”

According to council documents, the amount of the grant is equal to the increase in municipal taxes that are attributed to the work completed under the Community Improvement Program. Staff have estimated the financial impact to be between $50,000 to $150,000, which is the program’s limit.

Geoffrey and Rebecca submitted the applications last summer. Following a recommendation by the city’s planning department, the applications recently received approval from the planning and heritage committee and will be back in front of council in the future for a final vote.

count. Larry McCabe, a member of the committee as well as the advisory group Heritage Stratford, is among the politicians supporting the applications.

“All along (Wellington Street) it would be great to see that occupied with people living downtown,” McCabe said Thursday. “It just adds a vibrancy. Also, (we’re) talking about maintaining a heritage building. It’s not always easy to get the kind of financing you need to get a project fully completed.”

Inside the building, Geoffrey and Rebecca said the apartments are relatively small, averaging around 70 square meters (750 square feet), but they’ll be ergonomic and efficient. Rebecca’s company, One Key will manage them.

“We’re going for a Scandinavian, minimalist, modern look,” she said. “So, clean lines and simple and earthy, but it will go with the aesthetics of the age of the building.”

The Cheneys expect to be able to offer leases in May, with the first tenants moving in June 1.

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