Hundreds of architecture students now studying, living and spending in downtown Sudbury

Benoit Lachapelle walks to school every day.

The Ottawa native and fourth-year student at the McEwen School of Architecture has a place in the Donovan and often runs into classmates and some of his professors on his way to class in downtown Sudbury.

"Like most of the first years live on the Laurentian campus, but in second year, third year and fourth year, they're all moving downtown," says Lachapelle, who is involved in the architecture students association.

This was the promise that came with the millions of tax dollars to open the school in 2013: hundreds of students living, studying and spending money in downtown Sudbury.

Incoming school director David Fortin says the downtown has slowly become the "architecture school neighbourhood" and says while he encourages students to live downtown, he doesn't need to convince them that walking to class is better than bussing across town.

"We don't need to enforce anything in that way, because logistically, it just makes sense for them," he says.

No one is really keeping track of how many of the students are living downtown, but Downtown Sudbury chair Jeff MacIntyre is confident that most of them are and that it is helping to support new coffee shops, restaurants and other businesses.

"We do know anecdotally that a lot of them do live downtown and the ones that don't, want to live downtown," he says.

"Downtown's looking to get better data on all of this stuff, but we do know from the businesses that the investment that Laurentian showed in the downtown gave them the confidence to make their own investments."

The downtown housing market

As for the housing market, a Lisgar Street office building was converted into 50 apartments in 2012.

In 2014, the upper floors of the old Demarco's building on Elgin Street were turned into 13 student units. Building manager Sung Han says renting them has been relatively easy, although he does get questions about how rough it is living in downtown Sudbury.

Also in 2014, Mike Dykstra and his partners bought a Ste. Anne's Road building and have renovated it into the 58-unit Suite Times. He says they get some architecture students, but most of the tenants are international students at Laurentian University, Cambrian College and College Boreal.

He says new competitors pop up every year as the enrolment in Sudbury post-secondary institutions increases, including at the architecture school which is expected to add 100 students in the coming years.

"It'll increase the demand and the supply as well and you're going to see owners working hard to provide the best value they can," says Dykstra.

But no developers have yet ponied up the millions of dollars needed to build new housing in downtown Sudbury.

Prime Real Estate is considering building a student housing complex combined with a parking garage over the parking lot behind its Scotiabank Tower and a similar project for the Medina Lane parking lot it owns overlooking Memorial Park.

Architecture students will even be working on some designs for the potential student residences this school year.

But property manager Jim Searle says these are still just plans on a drawing board.

"We'd love to obviously, but it becomes a function of cost. Does it make sense for the investors?" he says.

"There's certainly an appetite for it."

That is the kind of new development downtown advocates like Jeff MacIntyre are hoping for to really signal a new era for the core.

"For the most part, all the main floor retail, there's not a lot of vacancy left. You're seeing the upper floors start to fill up and a lot of that is thanks to the school of architecture, but we need more of that," he says.

"You need all of the space filled, so that encourages people to build new."