Landmark development: Ajax purpose-built rental

June 7, 2017
NRU
By Dominik Matusik

Construction is nearly complete on phase one of a landmark development in downtown Ajax. The project is the largest purpose-built rental development ever built in Durham Region.

Medallion Developments’ The Vision at Pat Bayly Square will be built in three phases.

Phase one consists of a large civic square flanked by two 25-storey towers containing 562 residential rental units, 2,800 m2 of office space, and 1,200 m2 of ground-floor retail space. Phases two and three are currently in the planning stages and will comprise four more towers.

Ajax mayor Steve Parish told NRU that the Vision project is an integral component of developing a vibrant, mixed-use community downtown.

“It puts a significant population in our downtown...Which, of course, adds to the vibrancy and the whole ambience of a downtown. It’s important that you have a lot of people who are living there and requiring services there, and that spins off into the local economy... The development also anchors what will be a very large public square and gathering place for the community.”

Parish sees the inclusion of a substantial number of rental units within this development as critical to meeting current and future housing needs as well as official plan goals of diversifying housing types.

Ajax planning manager Gary Muller told NRU that Medallion initially approached the town with the proposal to build rental apartment buildings on municipally owned property on Bayly Street at Harwood Avenue.

“[The] proposal...was in line with a number of the town’s strategic objectives, one of which was to provide for a form of housing that was supportable by the municipality given the fact that there were, historically, low rental vacancy rates within town...There’s pent-up demand that already exists, so there would certainly be a component [of demand] that is coming from existing residents and it would be no surprise if there were future tenants that would come from a larger market area, perhaps like Toronto, or other places where they may have been priced out of the market.”

Ajax’s rental stock consists mostly of older apartment buildings and no new ones have been built in at least 20 years. Muller hopes that this project will lead to more rental housing development in Ajax in the future.

“I believe there’s always the hesitation on the part of the market to go first. This is the first of its kind and I think the success of this development may spring other developers to come on board as well. We see it as a positive that way.”

Medallion Developments project manager Aaron Bleeman told NRU that Vision represents a landmark project for the company.

“This is a very unique project for us...It will have a tremendous impact on the neighbourhood, on the town of Ajax, really, because of the scale of it and what the project is bringing to the neighbourhood.”

Parish says that he hopes more rental housing is built in Ajax and is optimistic about the future of downtown development. The town has a number of incentives in place to encourage development.

“This development is probably just the beginning of other development in the downtown,” Parish says.“We’ve been trying to do a number of things to see the redevelopment of our downtown, and one of those things was to give significant incentives to developers to develop in our downtown. Part of that is tax incremental financing... significant rebates or complete forgiveness of development charges. This has resulted, I think, in real interest in our downtown area.”

The first building of phase one of the Visions development will open its rental office on June 12, while both are slated to be ready for occupancy by the end of next year.