October 27, 2011

MICHAEL FESWICK

Treble Hall is a three-wythe brick structure with a wood-framed interior. More than 40 original pine doors and frames were among the historical features rescued in it.

FEATURE | General and Trades Contracting

Hamilton, Ontario a heritage redevelopment treasure

DON PROCTER

correspondent

If buying an old building to redevelop is your thing but big bucks separate you from the Toronto market, consider heading down the QEW to Hamilton, Ont. There is plenty of building stock for sale downtown and it is often going for rock-bottom prices.

Take a 16,000-square-foot 132-year-old architectural gem on a downtown main street in the steel city as an example. The Renaissance Revival style four-storey commercial building (in sound structural shape) and an adjoining pre-Confederation building sold for less than $750,000.

Burlington-based Historia Building Restoration Inc. purchased the two, Treble Hall and the Pagoda Building, with big renovation plans for performance and art space.

Jeff Feswick, president of Historia, expects to spend about $2 million to rehabilitate the development over the next 18 months. He hopes his building will be part of a trend that sees more workspace, entertainment and housing developed in the core.

Treble Hall is a three-wythe brick structure with a wood-framed interior. And it came to Historia free of major structural problems, although part of it had been vacant for about 50 years.

While some crumbling interior walls and ceilings had to go, rather than “blindly tearing everything down,” Feswick chose to carefully “deconstruct” the areas to save historic features. More than 40 original pine doors and frames, transoms, wood trim, baseboards and even several old clawfoot bathtubs were rescued.

In 1879 the building was three floors tall. The top floor featured a dance hall with 23-foot-high ceilings. Many years later the top floor was split into two levels and converted into residential apartments. Feswick’s plan is to convert the two floors back into a single-floor, as yet-to-be identified, performance space.

Even though the building sustained damage from a fire years ago, the structure remains solid and, in fact, the owner’s insurance at the time covered the cost of a new roof. “In a strange way that fire may have saved the building,” he says.

Feswick says the City of Hamilton’s economic development department has been instrumental in creating incentives for property owners like Historia to get their projects off the ground. Through its commercial property improvement program, for instance, Historia gets matching grants of $10,000 per store front and $15,000 for the corner property for work done.

“The grant didn’t sway my decision to purchase the property, but it sure didn’t hurt,” says Feswick. “The city is really trying to get developers and owners on side.”

Historia can apply for additional grants for any year forward while it is working on the project, explains Glen Norton, manager of Hamilton’s urban renewal and economic development division. As an example, if Historia includes office space and draws tenants from outside the city, the developer can apply for a low-interest loan for 90 per cent of the leasehold improvements required for that tenant, says Norton.

“If he (Historia) puts in rental or condo housing, we will lend them 25 per cent of project costs related to the housing work, at zero per cent interest for five years,” he adds.

Norton calls the incentives geared mostly to property owners, rather than developers. About 75 per cent of the applicants applying for incentives own a property and are looking at ways to improve it.

Feswick says the timing for developments like Treble Hall in downtown Hamilton could not be better.

“I think Hamilton is a great city but it has these black eyes here and there (vacant buildings) and Treble Hall was one of them. If we (and other developers) can continue to do something for that strip of John Street it could do a lot for the area, which is plunked right downtown.”

Print | Comment