Apartment Look

THUNDER BAY -- Construction of new housing units on the city's north side is proceeding at a brisk pace this summer. No fewer than seven separate projects are either already completed or on the drawing board. The newest development, now under construction, is a 24- unit apartment building on Royston Court, between the former provincial land registry office and HMCS Griffin Naval Reserve . Red River Holdings is the developer. City hall has also received an application for a building permit to convert the old land registry office to an 8- unit apartment building . The location of the two projects is less than a block north of the former Superior Court of Justice on Camelot Street, which a Toronto developer plans to convert to a hotel. The application for a building permit is expected to be submitted soon. Elsewhere in the north core, Syncor Contracting is working on the third of three 12- unit apartment buildings...

One Manhattan Square, Extell Development’s condo project on the Lower East Side waterfront , is attempting to attract would-be residents with an extensive amenities package that includes unusual offerings such as an adult treehouse and infrared saunas. The 800 ft. tall tower, which has 100,000 s/f of outdoor and indoor amenities, is designed to direct residents away from a solitary existence. “People want to be friends with their neighbors. This isn’t the city of many years past when you quickly get out of the elevator and no one says ‘hi’ to each other. We really thought about creating a community and a sense of community,” said Anna Zarro, Extell’s senior vice president and director of residential sales and leasing. The amenities package for the project is extensive. It includes a full- sized basketball court , a two- lane bowling alley , a squash court, a swimming pool, a golf simulator, a fitness center, a spa with a Turkish bath and private treatment rooms , a theater and perfo...

When it comes to condominium development , Cascadia’s two largest cities couldn ’t be more different. Last year nearly 60 percent of new housing starts in the city of Vancouver, BC , were condominiums; meanwhile, Seattle saw no new condominium buildings open . And that’s not changing anytime soon: less than 10 percent of all building slated for downtown Seattle in the next three years will be condos. What’s the difference—why the blossoming of condominium construction in one city and the almost complete dearth in the other? The short answer is economics. In Vancouver, apartments are saddled with an unfavorable tax code , making condos the more lucrative multi- family housing investment even despite high rental demand . In Seattle’s skyrocketing rental market , one that’s climbed even faster than the condo market in recent years, apartment buildings are much more financially attractive, while condos come with bigger risks and, typically, lower returns. Compounding this profit differe...

In densely populated urban hubs , apartment buildings are a necessary fixture. But all too often, rental or condo complexes are built simply to fill a need—to increase apartment supply —and developers overlook the opportunity to provide something different and distinct in bustling downtown areas . However, in recent years, some developers and architects are moving away from the traditional apartment model and embracing a more unique approach: building high- end apartments inside of shipping containers . As far as ingenious adaptive reuse goes, the shipping container complex is cutting-edge. “In Phoenix, we don’t have buildings that were once warehouses or manufacturing facilities that everyone’s now turning into lofts. So the shipping containers allow us to bring a little bit of that richness that’s really missing here,” says architect Brian Stark in a video explaining how the container complex was built. “[The containers] have been all over the world traveling, and now they’r...