Office to Residential Conversions

[J.OT13]

I picked up a copy of the City Building supplement from OBJ. It's all developer puff with not much new information, though some of the renderings are useful. The page on Groupe Mach is a sickly combination of bad puff journalism and corporate green-washing. It tries to sell 110 O'Connor and NavCan as conversion of office space to residential, but what they are actually doing is tearing down older but viable buildings and putting up new ones.

"It will be a complete conversion," says Alshowaier. We're pulling down the existing building, and putting in a more vibrant, modern building...".

"The existing building at 77 Metcalfe Street will also be converted from office use to residential space in a new 23-storey structure...".

Conversion is conversion, not total demolition and replacement with something entirely new. This is really misleading nonsense and OBJ should be ashamed of themselves for debasing their slim commitment to real journalism even further.

Agreed. Kind of strange and frustrating they use the word "conversion" in cases where it's not at all what's happening. We've heard that a lot in the past about facadism (sold as conversion when only bricks and windows are preserved) it seems like, but in this case NOTHING would be retained.

 

[zzptichka]

If you say it's a conversion you probably get some free stuff
Although it says "unchanged building envelope" so maybe not in this case

 

[J.OT13]

Seems like most do increase the floor area by adding a top level amenity space. That should be changed to something along of the lines of "no additional space added at ground level" or "no addition beyond 10% of gross floor area".