Offices above former pharmacy at Dundas and Richmond to become apartments
14 two-bedroom, 1 one-bedroom unit will rent at market rate, mayor says
A vacant building that once housed a drugstore and office space in the heart of downtown London will be converted into 15 new apartments this fall, the city's mayor announced Thursday.
Real estate developer MAAS Group said it plans to convert the office space that once occupied the upper floors of 166 Dundas Street into 15 new residential units, while keeping the bottom floors open for a commercial tenant.
"There has been no purposeful activity in this space at the heart of our city for six years, and that is changing with this announcement today," Mayor Josh Morgan said.
Morgan was among a number of officials at an announcement at the property, which once housed a Rexall pharmacy and office space above.
It's the second such project announced in as many months and the first to be partly subsidized by city hall, which is contributing more than $400,000 toward the project through a city grant program bankrolled by the federal Housing Accelerator Fund.
The announcement follows more than a year of discussions about the possible conversion of office and commercial space into residential units to help solve the twin problems of homelessness and a hollowed out downtown office sector. Morgan made both a priority in his state of the city addresses in 2023 and 2024.
The 14 two-bedroom units and one one-bedroom unit planned for the property are expected to rent at the market rate, the mayor said Thursday.
"Not every project is going to have affordable housing with it, but we are very focused on creating affordable units across the city," he said, pointing to other developments that feature affordable units.
He said the city needs both to help solve the crisis.
"We know we can't take the foot off the gas."
Morgan said the fact it only took three months to get the first project going since the announcement of a grant program earlier this year is an encouraging sign of things to come.
"We fast tracked it through council and had it approved by February. Now in May, we have the first successful application that will open units in the fall," he said.
"That's the kind of speed that we need to work with if we're going to create units and address the housing crisis."