The Nest: Yellowknife’s Newest and Most Interesting Apartment Building

Two days ago, the Nest finally obtained its occupancy permit (interested renters can apply here).  After sitting empty for a full thirteen years, the former Bellanca Building has been repurposed and reborn.

There are many things that are interesting about this project.  In a bigger southern city, it’s not unusual to hear of developers converting vacant office buildings to residential.  But folks who have been in Yellowknife for a while know that there are very few (zero?) developers in the North who would take on a project of this scale and complexity.  But here we have it, Borealis Development Inc., a new company with ties to our local Brick furniture store, has stepped up and gotten the job done.

While it’s not clear to me that the project was ever in real danger of failing, there was definitely a major problem in the final stages.  As has been well reported by Cabin Radio and CBC, the developers were forced by the City of Yellowknife to install a fire hydrant vault in order to obtain an occupancy permit, at a cost of somewhere north of $500,000.  It’s not unusual for a developer to have to upgrade a building’s fire supression infrastructure, but a fire hydrant vault is not part of the building, it is public infrastrucure that can be used by anyone.  The reason it had to be installed is that a few years ago the City changed how it interprets a particular building code requirement, which means that anyone who develops a property near the middle of any downtown Yellowknife block is too far (more than 45 meters) from the City’s existing fire hydrants and therefore has to install a new one.  But only the first developer has to do so, because once done, the neighbouring properties are within the 45 meter requirement.

To many of us in the commercial real estate game, this shortage of fire hydrants in the downtown core seems like it should be a City problem, not a developer problem.  But for whatever reason, the City opted to shift the burden onto property owners.  Perhaps not a problem if the property owner is the GNWT or the Federal Government, but certainly an issue for private or not-for-profit developers.  I know this is going to be looked at in the near future, because some on Council and at City Hall recognize that it’s unfair, so I won’t belabor the point here.

The even more interesting thing about the Nest is that it represents what is widely considered to be the best possible tool for revitalizing our downtown.  Yellowknife’s downtown core is very densely constructed and in that respect it is the envy of cities like Whitehorse and Grande Prairie.  The problem is, it is filled with office buildings and is therefore mostly empty after 5pm.  But here we have a ten-storey office building that has sat vacant for thirteen years, but will now be home to 100 or more full-time residents.  What will the impact be on nearby businesses?  How will it change the feel of the north block of 50th Street after 5pm?  Who will occupy the commercial spaces on the ground floor of the building?

I think anyone who has read to the end of this post would agree that the Nest will be an interesting case study in downtown revitalization, and I look forward to reporting back with obeservations in the future.