RioCan REIT has announced the launch of a new residential division known as RioCan Living along with ambitious plans to turn many of its retail shopping centres across Canada into dense mixed-use developments.
RioCan Living has eight major mixed-use projects underway, including six in the Greater Toronto Area, and has identified a total of 43 properties in its portfolio that if fully developed could create 20,000 new residential units, most of them rentals.
Many of the redevelopment sites are in urban areas in Canada’s six major markets that are ripe for intensification, said Jonathan Gitlin, RioCan senior vice-president, investments and residential, and are placed near public transit hubs.
“We are doing what we think is appropriate as city builders by taking these very strong and well located sites and creating something more, something that is more suitable for those growing communities, that will suit the needs of the city and create more housing which we think is in dire need in the city, and create transit-oriented developments that are sustainable and I think environmentally advanced,” said Gitlin.
RioCan Living was officially launched March 5. Among its projects currently under construction, The Well, to be located on the former Globe and Mail property on Front Street at Spadina Street in Toronto, can be viewed as a flagship, Gitlin said, with three million square feet of mixed-use space planned including 1.43 million square feet of housing in six towers. It also includes over one million square feet of office space with a tower rising 36 storeys and over 400,000 square feet of retail, entertainment and other uses.
Development partners on The Well are Allied Properties REIT, with expertise in the office sector, said Gitlin, and Diamond Corp., with strength in community and planning processes.
Tridel is taking a lead in building the condominium component and Woodbourne is involved in the rental residential component.
A battery of architects has been involved in the project including Adamson Associates Architects, Hariri Pontarini Architects, BDP, Claude Cormier + Associes, Wall Architects and architectsAlliance.
“RioCan and our partners in The Well are very cognizant that the look and feel of this community that we have created are very important so we have taken very significant steps to bring in the right expertise to curate an experience that is suitable for such a large site,” said Gitlin.
The partners have also announced a plan to extend Enwave’s existing Deep Lake Water Cooling and hot water distribution networks to include a sophisticated new energy storage facility at The Well.
Other RioCan projects underway include five other Toronto projects — eCentral at ePlace, at Yonge and Eglinton, Kingly on King West, Pivot at Yonge and Sheppard, Litho at Dupont and Christie and Stada in Little Italy — along with Brio, in Calgary’s Brentwood, and Frontier, in Gloucester, Ottawa.
Redevelopments on the radar include Toronto-area sites Sunnybrook Plaza, Dufferin Plaza, RioCan Scarborough Centre, RioCan Leaside Centre, Clarkson Village, RioCan Grand Park and properties on the Queensway, Markington and Eglinton Avenue East, and Elmvale and Westgate in Ottawa.
Gitlin identified four advantages to rebuilds at sites already within its portfolio. First, it’s cheaper than having to acquire properties at market value. Second, the properties are in highly urbanized spaces near coveted transit-oriented sites, and third, the properties already have income-producing retail outlets that can remain productive right up until the wrecking ball swings, he said.
A fourth advantage is that dealing with properties long owned by RioCan enables the developer to work with municipalities well in advance as plans are formulated, he added.
“RioCan has been working for years to have this pipeline in place and as part of that we have been making applications with these various municipalities to have these sites ready from an approvals perspective and we continue to do this with these chosen sites,” said Gitlin.
Of the 43 projects currently identified, there is approximately 25 million square feet of development potential including air rights potential in play, with rezoning approved for nearly 50 per cent.
Current and prospective new retailers are fully on side with the new mixed-use format, said Gitlin.
“There is a big trend toward urbanization and our tenants are very savvy and they like to follow the population, so they want to create those stories in an environment that has residents all around them and has transit-oriented development,” he said.
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