First construction steps finally underway for overhaul of Centennial Building in downtown Fredericton
CBC News | Posted: December 8, 2022 4:30 PM | Last Updated: December 8, 2022
Landmark building has been empty for years
After gathering dust for three years, the redevelopment of Fredericton's Centennial Building is no longer on hold.
The current plan is for the building to have 94 apartments, with a commercial space and restaurant on the main floor.
The original plan had included a hotel, but pandemic-driven financing difficulties forced a change in course last year.
Concrete blocks are now on the downtown Fredericton site to prepare the foundation, said Geoff Colter, a developer with Centennial Heritage Properties. He said the hope is for construction to begin in the spring.
Colter said the first phase has an expected end date in 2024, when people would be able to move into the apartments and commercial space and the original building will be opened.
The province sold the building, which once housed New Brunswick government offices, to Centennial Heritage Properties in 2019 for $4 million.
The city's planning committee approved a proposal to turn the building into a hotel and residential units in November 2020.
In 2021, the company put the project on hold because of financing issues brought on by the pandemic, Colter said.
Originally, Colter said, the plan was to have three floors of hotel space and four floors of apartment units, and he had a hotel partner already lined up. But with banks shying away from hotel developments after 2021, he said they went back to the drawing board.
"We had to pivot and go back to city council and and get approval for essentially 100 per cent multi-unit residential rather than a hotel component," he told Information Morning Fredericton.
He said there is still hope for a hotel on the Brunswick Street side of the property, but they will explore this in the second phase of the project.
"For phase one we're pretty much committed to multi-unit residential at this point."
Retirees among target clientele
He said the plan is to have one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. The target audience won't be big families, Colter said.
"It'll probably be retirees that move in," he said. "If it's a three-bedroom unit, they'll use two of the bedrooms for hobby rooms or office."
When it comes to the commercial space on the main floor, he said the company still doesn't know who the tenants might be.
"It's very difficult to say exactly what might end up in there given the, sort of, current landscape of that type of tenant in the downtown core," he said.
The company plans to keep the look of the building, he said.
"We're reusing the structure that is there 100 per cent, and the two sandstone wall ends will look exactly like they look today," he said.
Artwork in the building has been mostly removed, he said, and the three pieces that remain will be protected during construction. The cast figurines on the wall will stay in the main entrance of the building, he said. The other two are in the elevator lobbies on a couple of the floors within the building.
Colter said the second phase,
The whole project could also have a third phase, he said, so he cannot say when the whole project will be complete.
"Safe to say it'll be in the 2030s at some time," he said.