The new owner of a long-vacant building in the center of downtown London plans to convert several floors of former office space to apartments, a response to what it sees as a “vital” community need.
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The first and second floors of the former Rexall building at 166-170 Dundas St., on the northeast corner of Dundas and Richmond streets, will be earmarked for commercial use, the developer behind the project, Mississauga-based Maas Group, told The Free Press in an email.
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The remaining three stores above, once office space, will be made into apartments.
“This strategic conversion from mixed-use to residential spaces is an effective way to rapidly increase housing availability,” Maas Group officials said. “It’s about providing timely housing solutions that benefit the entire community.”
About 15 units are being planned for the upper floors; 14 two-bedroom apartments and one single-bedroom unit.
The zoning of the 0.054-hectare parcel allows for a wide range of uses, including retail, medical or dental offices and apartments. The maximum residential density allowed by city hall zoning is 350 units per hectare, or about 19 units given the footprint of the nearly 3,000-square-meter building.
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The building was sold for $5.15-million in December at 166 Dundas St. London Inc., a corporation whose director, Samir Jan, is the president and chief executive of Maas Group.
The five-storey building, once a CIBC branch, was most recently home to a Rexall store on the ground and second floors. The drug store closed in June 2018 after four years in business and the space has been unoccupied ever since.
The intersection, along the pedestrian flex street Dundas Place and steps away from the Covent Garden Market and Fanshawe College’s downtown campus, has been hit with the departure of several landmark tenants in recent years, including the Rexall, the McDonalds on the southwest corner in 2019 and the Starbucks on the northwest side in 2020.
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An independent bagel and coffee shop has since opened in the spot once occupied by the Starbucks.
Developing the downtown building is “particularly meaningful” to Maas Group since Jan grew up in the city, the company said.
“It’s a heartfelt journey back to where we started,” Maas Group officials said. “We’re not just developing a property, but reinvesting in a community we hold dear.”
The transformation of the one-time core office space to apartments comes as city hall mulls doling out significant grants to developers embarking on such conversions.
In his state of the city address last week, Mayor Josh Morgan announced the possibility of grants for office-to-residential conversions, giving $20,000 for every new one-bedroom apartment created and $28,000 for two- and three-bedroom units.
City hall would tap the existing $74 million it received from the federal government’s housing accelerator fund to make it happen. A staff report on the plan is expected to be put to politicians next month.
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