DevMcGill is underway on its first project outside Montreal, a mixed-use tower in Ottawa’s trendy ByWard Market that'll include a Le Germain hotel and expanded art gallery. President Stéphane Côté tells us Toronto’s his next target.
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DevMcGill’s Ottawa project, ArtHaus, an 87-unit condo, is the residential component of Arts Court, a JV with the City of Ottawa, Ottawa Art Gallery and University of Ottawa. Ottawa Art Gallery is doubling its exhibition space by taking the first four floors of the 23-storey tower (below), while the University of Ottawa is overseeing programming of a new 1,600 SF theatre inside the gallery. The hotel will be on floors four to 14, and the condos on top. Stephane’s firm and partner EBC Inc, which is handling the gallery expansion, won the air rights to develop above the gallery, then reached out to Group Germain Hotels, which was looking to enter Ottawa.
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Having Group Germain on board enabled the project to proceed without requiring the pre-sale of suites. Good thing, says Stéphane, as Ottawa’s condo market is sluggish at the moment. ArtHaus, slated for 2017 completion, is the first project outside Montreal for DevMcGill. Stéphane launched the firm in 1998 and started off redeveloping heritage buildings in Old Montreal, like Caverhill, a condo-loft project (seen below). Ottawa drew DevMcGill because it’s focused on intensifying its core via condos. “And we hope we can bring some new blood,” Stéphane says.
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Next up: Toronto, a market Stéphane notes is well ahead of Montreal and Ottawa—and most other cities—on condo development. DevMcGill is scouting properties for a maiden mixed-use project here, and he tells us he hopes to have a deal by year’s end. Competition's fierce, but Stéphane's confident his group is well suited to tackle TO. “We’re urban developers in Montreal, and we’re used to working in historical and built environments.” Wherever DevMcGill ends up building in Toronto, its chief promises edgy architecture. “We like to push the envelope.”
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