Historic rebirth

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/08/2023 (809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The smell of freshly-baked biscuits that once permeated throughout the former Paulin-Chambers building is now an aromatic sense of a new day in one West Exchange neighbourhood.

The Paulin Street Lofts, a 107-unit loft-style apartment complex, completed construction earlier this year and leased all of its suites this summer. The project, undertaken by brothers Mark and Rick Hofer of MRH Properties, was a $20-million conversion of the 100,000-square-foot historic building that occupies the entire block on the east side of Paulin Street.

The building was formerly built for and occupied by Paulin-Chambers Co. factory, a local biscuit manufacturer, from 1899 until the plant closed in 1991. The property — which officially stands at 311 Ross Ave. — went through a few iterations, its original three-storey frame being demolished in 1910 and replaced with a new five-storey warehouse. Builders continued to add to the structure through 1975, creating the six-storey building that exists today.

The Paulin-Chambers building was designated a municipally-designed historic building in 2020. The city assumed ownership of the building in 1999 and used it for storage until 2019, when it was declared surplus property and sold to Centreventure.

The north side of the building is adjoined by a three-storey structure — on 101 Paulin St. — which serves as the main entrance to the residential block.

A fresh dark-brown paint job on the smaller property marks the onset of a two-phase project the Hofer brothers have planned for Paulin Street. They also purchased the surface parking lot adjacent to their new residential block, where they plan to add upwards of another 150 units as a part of a multi-family build and create a walkway that connects to Phase 1.

“We’re trying to build a community area and enhance the old area where we’re at,” said Mark Hofer.

“When I saw the building, an old-type of building gives you unique opportunities — you can get square footage in apartments that you’d never believe you could get in new a build, because everyone’s building smaller. You got brick, you got beams, you got character.”

With unfavourable interest rates clouding their plans to break ground on Phase 2, Mark said they are aiming to continue the project in 2024.

“I like converting, me and my brother. We see what other people don’t see in the potential. No. 1, I believe we need to displace commercial for residential in our downtown,” Mark said. “We don’t need any more commercial. I think the thing that will save our downtown, which I’m passionate about, is conversions and residential and more people on the ground.”

The Paulin Street Lofts is the third heritage building conversion orchestrated by the Hofer brothers (The Boyce on 316 Ross Ave., The Edge on 232 Princess St. and The Avenue at 256 Portage Ave.), and perhaps is Mark’s favourite to date.

“Paulin Street is really impressive. The building conversion is probably one of the best ones we’ve done,” he said.

“The building is amazing. The amenities we put into it — we’ve got an insane rooftop deck, we’ve got a theatre in there, kept some of the room for a gym. We’re big believers in amenity spaces for our tenants.”

Converting historical buildings into residential spaces is never easy, however. While new builds can move quickly with plans, quotes and setting a budget, Mark explained there are particular challenges that present themselves with projects that involve older buildings.

“You never know what you’re gonna come up against ever,” he said. “Things change, the layouts are all different, you can’t get perfect suite layouts — you can only get what the building gives you.

“It’s expensive. Depends on the heritage status, and what’s protected. In this case, half of the building was heritage, the other half was not. Half of the building is just exterior protection, so from a heritage perspective it was a reasonable conversion because there was no real interior stuff that had to be protected.”

Perhaps there were no two better minds to author a new chapter of the building, according to Loretta Martin, development manager with Centreventure.

“It takes special developers to take on these heritage building projects,” she said.

After the city declared the property surplus in May 2019, it auctioned the building to Centreventure, who sold it for development to MRH Properties in December 2019.

In the summer of 2020, MRH Properties began construction.

“That was a critical property. The city realized how continued use as a storage facility with no activity was not going to further redevelopment of that area and there had been a few developments close by,” Martin said.

“… and with the market lands, the opportunity to revitalize that whole area — working with developers like the Hofers, who have invested, oh, millions of dollars in the immediate surrounding area — and having developed three other heritage buildings already, it was excellent.

Indeed, the Hofers have invested a substantial amount into the city’s core and have no immediate plans of slowing down. Mark said other improvements like the planned $500-million revitalization of Portage Place by True North Real Estate Development will help manufacture the community he envisions downtown.

“We can almost engineer a community with the amount of property that we have,” he said. “I love engineered communities, and I think that’s what (Mark) Chipman has done and that’s what Centreventure wants to do with the whole (Sports, Hospitality, Entertainment) District, and that’s what I’m trying to single-handedly do in this area of downtown.”

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca