Construction to turn vacant Exchange hotel into affordable housing to start this year, owner says

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This article was published 13/05/2024 (521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The owner of a historic, long-vacant hotel in the Exchange District expects construction to convert the building into affordable housing will begin later this year.

Immigration lawyer Ken Zaifman purchased the now-111-year-old St. Charles Hotel in 2005 and had plans to turn it into a boutique hotel. But a 1986 city heritage designation protects the exterior from demolition or alteration.

In December 2022, Zaifman announced plans to re-imagine the building at Notre Dame Avenue and Albert Street by turning it into affordable housing units. But he said he found himself at a standstill for more than a year, as a result of rising construction costs and the challenges of renovating a historical building.

“It was languishing in the rubble of increased costs, difficulty finding companies to build a project priced a certain way, and the timing just wasn’t there,” he said.

“It was languishing in the rubble of increased costs, difficulty finding companies to build a project priced a certain way, and the timing just wasn’t there”–Ken Zaifman

He has now partnered with Serhal Consulting, a local development group, and said conversations with the city’s planning, property and development department began in February. Zaifman said he hopes to see crews renovating the building’s interior within the year.

He said he has yet to apply for any provincial or federal funding and plans to wait until plans for the building are approved by the city.

Serhal Consulting also worked with the owner of the John C. Falls House at 36 Roslyn Rd. In 2022, the property and development committee voted in favour of removing that house from the city’s list of historical resources, which allowed for demolition. Heritage Winnipeg was also in support of that change — a rarity for the the organization — because the structure had deteriorated to a point where it could not be feasibly saved.

However, a similar fate isn’t in the cards for the St. Charles Hotel, Zaifman said.

“It’s a solid, structurally solid building,” he said. “It’s not falling down any time soon.”

Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg, was more skeptical about the future of the building.

“When he first bought it, he promised us a big development that included the parking lot, yada yada, and the whole streetscape, and he was going to work with the other adjacent building owners,” she said. “Nothing has ever come into fruition.”

The city’s hands are tied as far as influencing the future of privately purchased vacant heritage buildings, Tugwell said; as long as owners pay fees associated with the vacant building bylaw, which start at $2,517 and go up yearly after that.

She’d said she’d like to see the city “have a stronger spine” and develop stricter bylaws on the timeline around purchasing and re-developing heritage buildings.

“I just think that without stronger policies and certainly stronger bylaws, if we had that nobody would have to worry about anybody taking it personally, they’d have the tools in their toolkit to do it,” she said.

In early 2013, the city moved to seize the hotel by giving Zaifman a derelict building certificate with a demolition clause removed to preserve the building after a years-long order to install a sprinkler system. Later in the year, the city confirmed Zaifman had brought the building up to code and he would maintain ownership.

Point Douglas councillor Vivian Santos said she hasn’t had an update on the future of the building since 2022.

“It has been quite challenging, but I understand economic times and trying to be patient with the property owner,” she said.

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“Once you start changing some of those historical designations and taking away a little bit of the history from the Exchange, you start losing sight of the future, and I made that very clear with (Zaifman), that I would not support removing heritage designations”–Vivian Santos

Santos said there’s an urgent need for affordable housing in her ward, but removing the heritage designation and allowing the hotel’s demolition wasn’t the answer.

“Once you start changing some of those historical designations and taking away a little bit of the history from the Exchange, you start losing sight of the future, and I made that very clear with (Zaifman), that I would not support removing heritage designations,” she said.

The St. Charles Hotel is one of more than 100 buildings within the Exchange District National Historic Site.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.