The Saturday Huddle: A Room Without A View
Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle. This is a new weekly column that will feature opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
For the past few weeks, Janet and I have been standing at the window on the second floor of our house overlooking the Bay of Fundy. She’s been anxiously monitoring the construction of an apartment building, as floor-by-floor, the builders have chipped away at, and eventually eliminated our view of the water and the horizon. I’ve been more accepting as developers begin to show interest in our little corner of Saint John’s south end. “It’s better to have a neighbour than a view!” I say as cheerfully as I can.
The cranes in the air these days in Saint John are for residential, not commercial projects. The building under construction in front of my house is a five-storey apartment complex with 29 units, an addition to the Oceanside Urban Lofts development that already has two recently renovated buildings with 20 units. Down the street, construction is underway on The Telegraph, a six-storey building with 32 units. A few blocks away, a seven-storey development called The Wentworth, with more than 70 units, is being built.
The developer of The Wentworth also recently purchased a property on King Street; long considered a prime piece of real estate in the city centre that has remained undeveloped for years. He has yet to make concrete plans but says it will almost certainly have a strong residential component. “Commercial is pretty risky at this point so that’s why the focus would be residential,” Percy Wilbur told Huddle in an interview in December.
With the economy slowing down on so many fronts during the pandemic, I fully expected at least some of these developments to be delayed or halted entirely. By Saint John standards, the rents on most of the new units will be high ($1,100 and up for one- and two-bedroom units) so they’ll need to be occupied by employed, well-paid people. But all the projects are still going ahead, which is also the case for residential projects in other Maritime cities, not just Saint John.
Halifax, because of its size, has many ongoing projects on a whole other level. On Friday, Huddle reported on a new residential project near Lake Banook in central Dartmouth that will have two 12-storey towers with 174 units. A large-scale residential development at the nearby Dartmouth Crossing retail and commercial area could see upwards of 2,500 units added once its entire phased plan is complete.
On the Halifax side, Huddle has also reported on new projects in recent months, including the Cunard mixed-use waterfront project that will have more than 200 residential units, and the Joseph Howe Drive project that will have a 12-storey tower with 324 residential units.
Cities like Moncton can’t compete on the same scale, but it is setting construction records nonetheless. In the midst of the pandemic, the city had another record year for building permits, mostly due to an increase in residential construction. Residential development made up nearly half of the building activity at $133.6-million, which included $90.8-million worth of new apartment buildings representing 728 units.
All of this new residential development has a downside, of course. There are plans for more affordable housing in all three cities, and the concern is top of mind for planners and community leaders, but there have been frequent and understandable complaints about increasing rents. This is especially true in urban centres where a lot of investment is taking place amidst increasing demand, leading to calls for rent control policies in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
But these new developments have a potential upside as well, especially if the movement toward remote work extends beyond the pandemic. A recent survey of companies with offices in downtown Moncton showed that most plan to move to a hybrid model with people working both out of home and at the office. This could mean fewer people to shop, eat and drink at downtown businesses, at lunch and after work.
At the same time, there is a lot of planned residential construction in the Moncton city centre. Of the 728 units scheduled to be built in the city based on last year’s building permit data, 248 will be downtown. That could help city centre shops, bars and restaurants that will need to make up for the loss of many of the office workers who remain at home more post-pandemic.
“I think that’s a sign that more people do want to live downtown,” said John Wishart, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Moncton. “So, if we can accomplish that, those numbers of people will help offset the percentage of the workers who won’t be working downtown.”
“We need to promote supporting local and supporting your downtown business in a big way,” he says. “But beyond that, we may be seeing the leading edge of a transformation of downtown into more of a residential-commercial neighborhood as opposed to more of a commercial core.”
The movement of people back in city centres had only begun in the years before the pandemic hit, and I’m pleasantly surprised the momentum hasn’t stalled in neighbourhooods like mine that had only recently seen new investments in housing.
Several years ago, I appeared at a local planning and advisory committee to voice my opposition to zoning rules that would allow a parking lot to remain across the street from my house. I felt like it was a prime piece of land for development that fit the city’s plans to create density in the urban core. My plea was dismissed with several committee members saying there was no demand for more residential development in my end of the neighbourhood.
I’m happy to report they were wrong. Since then, the developer proceeded with the 49-unit urban loft development that has blocked our view of the water. Someone else built a nice single-family home. Another couple has plans to build another one in front of our house.
That I have a view of the water over the parking lot is no consolation. I’d rather have a neighbour.
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Banner photo: Mark Leger/Huddle.