Corner lot has sat empty for more than three years as developer carefully planned new building
Aug 09, 2018 by Terry Pender Waterloo Region Record
A glass-walled office building with a rooftop restaurant and patio will be constructed at a high-profile intersection next to Kitchener City Hall.
One Young Street will feature high ceilings, large posts and beams and five floors with 53,000 square feet of space. It will have retail outlets on the ground floor, and a rooftop inspired by the U.K.-based Boundary Hotel's bar and grill in East London.
"Up on this patio you will have gorgeous views of the streetscape and Victoria Park," said Bernie Nimer, the veteran local developer behind One Young Street. The rooftop restaurant with 8,000 square feet of space will also have glass walls. In front of the restaurant will be a 3,500-square-foot patio.
"And you are going to be part of King Street, for all those festivals you can stand up there," said Nimer.
Construction is expected to begin next spring on the $15-million project where the Mayfair Hotel stood until March 2015. The hotel and building next door were demolished after engineers found a hole in the foundation making the building unsafe.
For more than three years Nimer had architects working on different designs for the corner lot at the intersection of King Street West and Young Street. With only 9,900 square feet, the lot is small. It is very close to other buildings. In all, the architects produced 30 different designs.
"It was very challenging," said Nimer. "Four architects took a crack at this. By the time we got to the end it was Walter Fedy who delivered.
"The Walter Fedy team included architect Ben Gregory, the firm's principal architect Fei Wei and architectural assistant Victor Poon.
Nimer decided on a new office building for two main reasons. There are lots of condos and apartments currently under construction in downtown Kitchener, but the downtown has almost no brick-and-beam space left for redevelopment.
About 650,000 square feet of new office space has been approved or is in the approval pipeline for downtown Kitchener. That does not phase Nimer.
"I think there is still a desire for a post-and-beam-style building, and we are out of them so I am going to create one," said Nimer.
Lease rates in downtown Kitchener range from $10 to $28 per square foot. This building will be Class A space, and needs established firms and companies that can pay the higher rates.
"I was more than thrilled to see the building design for the site," said Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.
The new building acknowledges the historically significant Mayfair Hotel. Using what is called fritted glass, the second and third floors of the new building will have images of the Mayfair Hotel's windows embedded in the glass. Pedestrians on King and Young streets will see the old building inside the glass of the new one.
"It will be fantastic," said Vrbanovic. "It's certainly very exciting for that property and the downtown as a whole."
One Young Street, along with the redevelopment of 48 Ontario St. N. by Voisin Capital, and Phase II of the City Centre condos, will mark the end of city hall's long-running efforts to support the redevelopment of several properties on the block bordered by King, Young, Duke and Ontario streets.
In 2000 the city began buying up properties on what it dubbed Centre Block, including the old Forsyth shirt factory, the Mayfair Hotel, and the former legion building on Ontario Street. In all, the city spent more than $14 million on the block. When the last of the new development is finished it will have taken about 20 years.
While it has taken far longer than anyone anticipated in the beginning, city hall achieved two main goals — increasing the number of people living and working in the downtown.
"With the projects that are under construction already or just getting underway, we will see several thousand more people living downtown, which will no doubt add to the vibrancy," said Vrbanovic.
tpender@therecord.com
Twitter: @PenderRecord
Twitter: @PenderRecord
by Terry Pender
Terry Pender covers business and can be reached via Twitter @PenderRecord.
