The City of Ottawa will open its first office-to-housing conversion early next year.
Construction crews have been renovating the one-time movie theatre turned office building at 230 Queen St. since the summer, under the design supervision of Ottawa’s CSV Architect. The building had been vacant for five years.
Once the renovation is finished, it will house up to 143 individuals, many of whom are likely to be new Canadians, on three floors in an open-concept space with sleeping pods with half walls, shared cafeterias, washrooms and seating areas. People will also have access to caseworkers to assist them in landing more permanent housing.
“The idea for this building and this project is that it would be shorter stays on the way to getting to permanent housing,” said Darryl Hood, principal architect at CSV Architects.
We do need to do something. Just having a project like this makes us feel like we are starting at least to build a repertoire of solutions.– Darryl Hood, CSV Architects
“This new facility will relieve pressure on the emergency shelter system and support our plans to exit and alleviate the need to use recreational centres as temporary emergency overflow shelters,” said Kale Brown, Ottawa’s acting director of housing and homelessness, in an emailed statement to CBC News.
Currently, hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers are living in two makeshift transitional housing spaces at the Heron Road Community in Alta Vista and the Bernard Grandmaître Arena in Vanier.
The city has plans to open a number of new spaces to help with with the city’s housing crunch including a giant tent-like structure near the Nepean Sportsplex, with another one in Kanata South if necessary. It also hopes 230 Queen St. will be part of the solution.
“Construction of the building is slated to be completed in February with expected opening within one month of construction completion,” said Brown.
The city has negotiated a 10-year lease for the building, with the first five years costing $4.38 million, including a $1.48 million price tag to renovate it.
Right building for the right purpose
Just one exterior wall at 230 Queen St. has windows, which means converting the space into transitional housing was a much easier fit for the building.
Ontario’s building code requires that sleeping areas have access to natural light, so the more exterior walls with windows, the more individual units that can be built. That’s why a building like 230 Queen St. doesn’t allow for a large number of units.
Plus, converting an office building into a multi-unit building usually requires an HVAC upgade, said Hood.
“Under the building code, certain uses need different kinds of ventilation,” he said. “So an apartment unit needs its own ducted fresh air ventilation, whereas an office building provides one location, fresh air to the whole floor.”
This is the third time CSV Architects has converted an office building into a residential space. The firm is also behind another affordable housing project in Ottawa’s Chinatown neighbourhood where it partnered with the non-profit, Cornerstone to convert a four-storey office building into 45 new affordable residential units for women and gender-diverse people.
It also renovated the former Canada Red Cross office building on Metcalfe Street into 61 market-value luxury units.
“It’s not necessarily much less expensive than building a new building in some cases, but often it is,” said Hood.
It is however one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly ways, he added.
Part of ‘a repertoire of solutions’
Lee-Christine Bushey, project lead with CSV Architects, is hopeful office conversions catch on.
“The positive impact that this project has or will have is contagious,” said Bushey, who lives in Centretown and sees the impact of housing insecurity in her neighbourhood.
“I think it’ll be more of an encouragement for other people to step up and have more buildings like this.”
“We do need to do something,” said Hood. “Just having a project like this makes us feel like we are helping and starting at least to build a repertoire of solutions that can be done here and in other cities.”
