A land assembly along Wellington Street West, just at the edge of downtown Ottawa, has been sold for redevelopment to ML DEVCO. (Courtesy Cushman and Wakefield)

A land assembly in Ottawa’s trendy Hintonburg neighbourhood has been acquired by ML DEVCO Inc., the development arm of Magil Laurentian Realty Investments Inc., for $6.2 million.

The properties located at 973-979 Wellington St. W. and 40 Armstrong St. will be part of a future multifamily residential development.

While Magil Laurentian real estate vice-president Maureen Flanigan said it’s too early to reveal details about the project, she told RENX: “It is going to be redeveloped as a purpose-built rental with some amenity spaces and community retail.”

Community consultations regarding the company’s plans will take place in the coming weeks, Flanigan added.

Commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield brokered the deal while working on behalf of law firm Beament Hebert Nicholson LLP, which owned and occupied a small office building on the property and acquired an adjacent parking garage on Wellington Street.

The Armstrong Street site is occupied by a small residential rental property that was owned by a separate private vendor.

Development application approved in 2018

An application was approved in 2018 to build a nine-storey, 54-unit condominium with two affordable housing units at 979 Wellington.

The application also included numerous community commitments; a $155,000 contribution to the rebuilding of the Laroche Park fieldhouse, a $10,000 contribution to cycling facilities on Armstrong, and the expansion of pedestrian space in the adjacent Somerset Square.

“The vendor of the office building had put together a plan to build a condo on the site prior to acquiring the adjacent garage,” Cushman & Wakefield associate VP Scott Brooker told RENX. “When they acquired the garage, they decided to put the property on the market.”

The property was made available last year. Brooker said there was “lots of interest and lots of calls from a variety of investors and developers.”

Brooker said it took about a month to identify a purchaser and about five months until the deal closed. “Everybody was happy at the end of the day” with the agreed-upon price, he added.

This deal is another example of the stability and strength of the Ottawa multiresidential market, according to Brooker.

“There are deals in play,” he said.

Hintonburg is evolving

Hintonburg is located west of Ottawa’s downtown and has historically been a working-class, predominantly residential neighbourhood, with a commercial strip along Wellington which has been growing in popularity during the past decade.

The area has also been gentrifying due to the arrival in 2019 of phase one of Ottawa’s light rail transit (LRT) system and its proximity to the core.

“The site is seen as a gateway into the Hintonburg neighbourhood,” said Brooker.

He noted it’s just a few hundred metres from the station where the Confederation Line will intersect with the Trillium Line when phase two of the LRT system is completed in a few years. Construction is ongoing on that line.

“There’s a lot of development activity happening with new high-rise residential in that area,” said Brooker.