A downtown Yellowknife office block transformed into 72 apartments has begun taking applications from prospective renters after receiving its occupancy permit.
Borealis Development, which carried out the refurbishment of the old Bellanca Building, has reopened it as a series of one and two-bed apartments named The Nest.
Borealis ended up in an argument with City Hall over who should pay for a fire hydrant vault that the city said was required, but which Borealis said hadn’t been initially specified.
The developer had suggested it didn’t know what would happen if the city didn’t help cover the hydrant vault’s cost but, having lost that argument, went ahead and built the vault anyway (as first reported by the CBC).
This week, lawyer Scott Parker – who represented Borealis in its dealings with the city over the hydrant vault – confirmed the company had now received its occupancy permit for The Nest.
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Through Parker, the owners of Borealis declined an interview request.
The Nest’s website states that leases begin at $1,950 per month. Borealis earlier told Yellowknife City Council it would make eight of the 72 units “affordable” under federal guidelines.
On the Century 21 Prospect Realty website, realtor and former city councillor Adrian Bell – noting the Bellanca Building had been empty for 13 years – celebrated The Nest’s opening.
“In a bigger southern city, it’s not unusual to hear of developers converting vacant office buildings to residential. But folks who have been in Yellowknife for a while know that there are very few (zero?) developers in the North who would take on a project of this scale and complexity,” Bell wrote.
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“To many of us in the commercial real estate game, this shortage of fire hydrants in the downtown core seems like it should be a city problem, not a developer problem. But for whatever reason, the city opted to shift the burden onto property owners.
“Perhaps not a problem if the property owner is the GNWT or the federal government, but certainly an issue for private or not-for-profit developers. I know this is going to be looked at in the near future, because some on council and at City Hall recognize that it’s unfair.”
Bell said the redevelopment of a major piece of central Yellowknife infrastructure represented, to him, “the best possible tool for revitalizing our downtown.”
“Yellowknife’s downtown core is very densely constructed and in that respect it is the envy of cities like Whitehorse and Grande Prairie. The problem is, it is filled with office buildings and is therefore mostly empty after 5pm,” he wrote.
“But here we have a 10-storey office building that has sat vacant for 13 years, but will now be home to 100 or more full-time residents. What will the impact be on nearby businesses? How will it change the feel of the north block of 51 Street after 5pm? Who will occupy the commercial spaces on the ground floor of the building?
“The Nest will be an interesting case study in downtown revitalization, and I look forward to reporting back with observations in the future.”
