Dealing with a housing crunch with its inhabitants anticipated to swell as soon as Volkswagen’s electric-vehicle battery plant opens, St. Thomas is popping to inventive methods to bulk up its housing provide.
Revealed Dec 03, 2024 • Final up to date Dec 03, 2024 • 2 minute learn
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The previous house of the St. Thomas Occasions-Journal newspaper has been transformed into The Occasions, a 16-unit house constructing at 16 Hinks St. in St. Thomas. Photograph taken on Dec. 2, 2024. (Mike Hensen/The Ontario Chronicle)
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Dealing with a housing crunch with its inhabitants anticipated to swell as soon as Volkswagen’s electric-vehicle battery plant opens, St. Thomas is popping to inventive methods to bulk up its housing provide.
The newest instance of the town’s push to construct extra properties comes within the type of the conversion of the previous workplaces of The St. Thomas Occasions-Journal newspaper, the place occupancy is now underway after the property was was 16 rental items.
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“We have a number of small, medium and large projects like this happening in St Thomas,” Mayor Joe Preston mentioned of the conversion challenge. “From a council point of view, we’ve been as aggressively searching for more supportive housing, simply to keep homelessness in check, all the way up to as much supply as we can build.”
Situated at 16 Hincks St., in downtown St. Thomas, the previous Occasions-Journal constructing was purchased in 2019 by Hillside Property Developments Inc., which pitched the thought of the conversion that was later permitted by metropolis council.
“We were looking for a nice, big project to do, and that building, as beautiful as it was, was just sitting empty,” mentioned Steven Manicom, a St. Thomas native and director of the event firm. “So, we took it upon ourselves to create 16 high-end apartments.”
Rents on the items, which provide high-end finishes and fashionable designs, vary from $1,800 to $2,000 per thirty days.
It’s solely one among a number of infill initiatives council has permitted in an try to extend housing provide within the metropolis, Preston mentioned, including extra will probably be wanted to soak up the projected demand.
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Final 12 months, for instance, development started on a nine-storey, 167-unit constructing on the former Alma School, destroyed in a 2008 fireplace. That is Part 2 of a challenge that already delivered a 156-unit tower on the positioning.
Final month, metropolis corridor additionally introduced a partnership with developer Prespa Group that noticed the town lease a whole 24-unit constructing for use to offer inexpensive items to seniors.
“Before it was occupied, we went to (the builder) and said, ‘We’d like to lease the whole thing. We need it for seniors,’” Preston mentioned. “So, the housing department did that and now we’ve been able to take some 24 people off our waiting list. You’re going to see some more creativity like that.”
The urgency stems from the added progress and demand the Volkswagen electric-vehicle battery plant, working underneath the PowerCo model, is anticipated to deliver to the town southeast of London.
In 2022, for example, a city-commissioned research projected St. Thomas’s inhabitants reaching 65,100 individuals by 2051. An up to date report, accomplished after the battery plant announcement, had the town reaching 79,500 individuals over the identical timeline, or about 14,400 greater than initially anticipated.
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“This is our preparation for the growth we are expecting, which is somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people a year, so we know we need to project that amount of housing units,” Preston mentioned.
“We have to continue to look at the affordability and the availability of housing in our community,” he added. “It’s still very tight from an availability point of view. We know the supply helps with cost, so we continue to look at every project we can and move forward on it.”
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