Ottawa's office-to-residential conversions offer solutions

  • Some local developers are stepping in to address the city’s housing crisis and to help reduce the vacancy rate by exploring office-to-residential conversions – looking at properties in the downtown core that are past their best life cycle.
  • With two more office buildings coming out of inventory downtown, this brings the total office space coming out of inventory to nearly 450,000 square feet (sf) of new apartment accommodations in the last four years.
  • Other properties have been identified as potentials for conversion, which could pull an additional 330,000 sf out of existing inventory.
  • Esplanade Laurier and its entire city block is scheduled for eventual disposal by the Canada Lands Corporation. This site and the live/work/play potential it represents is certainly worthy of discussion as a conversion candidate.

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