A unique development that has transformed a section of Elgin Street is now being occupied.
Chris Small, who owns the Village Inn on Colborne Street with his wife, Tracy, had five houses on Elgin Street demolished last fall to make way for two modular-apartment buildings. The stacked units, at 64 and 74 Elgin St., are 12-by-40-foot steel-frame modules.
There are 27 units combined. Twenty-three of them are 480 square feet, two are 640 square feet and the other two, which are two-bedroom apartments, are 800 square feet. Two of the units are fully wheelchair accessible.
In the larger building, seven units are now occupied and Small expects five or six more will be occupied at the beginning of December. He is hoping the smaller building will be ready for renters around the same time.
“It’s been a dream of mine and my wife’s for years now. Now that we have people moving in, it’s really rewarding,” he said. “There have been a lot of stressful days and nights, but it’s been 100 per cent worth it.”
The project wasn’t without its challenges. It wasn’t easy to get some supplies and workers, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Trying to find workers was the hard part. We’re using local guys and they’re hard to come by,” Small said.
He also quickly learned of the hoops he’d have to jump through to make his dream a reality. That included installing a $300,000 stormwater/sewer management system.
Also, he said the city wouldn't allow for the buildings to be one solid colour and the windows couldn’t all be the same.
“The city didn’t want a cookie-cutter building,” he said.
Despite some of those challenges, he said the city was “really behind it” as it fit in with the municipality’s focus on downtown intensification.
“It’s made the street look better,” said Tracy. “We love the colours. It brightens the area up. This street is improving.”
The Smalls have heard some concerns about the cost to rent the units.
Last August, Steve Marshall, owner of Northern Shield Development Corporation, said he believed “modular is the way forward for construction in the future.”
“It’s a way that we’re going to be able to make things even close to the realm of affordable, regardless of the definition of affordability,” he said.
The Elgin Street development is not social or subsidized housing, and the 480-square-foot units go for $1,195 per month, plus hydro.
“If we could make it more affordable, we would,” Tracy said. “We tried to stay as cheap as we could.”
They had initially intended for rent to be lower than it is, Chris said, but added they were required to increase rent in order to guarantee a mortgage from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
“A lot of people think we’re trying to push the lower-end people away. That’s not what we’re trying to do,” he said, noting the adjacent Village Inn is an example of a place that caters to those who need something more affordable.
Those who have already moved in to the new apartments “are really happy,” Tracy said.
“They’re excited to be moving into a new place.”
Those who have been able to take a look inside the apartments have been surprised, Chris said.
“They realize it’s deceiving from the outside,” he said of the size of the units.
