A Guelph-based company is spending nearly $8 million to convert a former Haileybury convent to the region’s first series of condominiums, located on the shores of Lake Temiskaming.
Although Skyline Inc. typically manages rental properties in southern Ontario, the potential to acquire the L’Acceuil Ste-Marie convent and establish upscale accommodations in the region has proven too attractive an opportunity to pass up.
“We’ll go to wherever it looks like there’s a market for development,” Martin Castellan, director of real estate development for Skyline Inc., says.
“Anything that has some kind of water feature to it or a view of that sort is attractive to us. Plus, the New Liskeard-Haileybury area seems to be a good little micromarket as far as the type of client or customer we’re looking for once we get sales on the go.”
With a local population of 11,500, as well as 40,000 in the Claybelt area and the potential to draw from Timmins and beyond, the company is targeting an “adult lifestyle”, or empty-nesters for its new complex. Units are expected to range from as low as $79,000 to as high as $349,000 for a penthouse-level 1,500-square-foot space.
The five-storey, 75,000-square-foot former convent seemed a particularly good fit for the company’s goals to create upscale condominiums, Castellan says. An addition to the convent was constructed in 1957 and as a result, five of the building’s six walls have a view of the lake.
In consultation with the nuns that inhabited the site until its recent acquisition by Skyline, the building was named Place Ste-Marie in an effort to retain some of its heritage.
Originally built in the 1920s, much of the interior of the site is being gutted to allow for an entirely new layout and design. Despite the facility’s age, Castellan says the interior was in practically pristine condition, a testament to the overall quality of the building.
“It sort of hurt to take it all out when you see the kind of craftsmanship that went into it, but you do what you have to do.”
The current phase of the project, which is being largely overseen by local firm Belanger Construction, involves blasting non-bearing interior walls in order to make way for a new layout. This work will also prepare for the installation of new mechanical systems, as well as all-new electrical systems by Northside Electric, another local company.
Work on a model suite is expected to be completed in time for an open house on September 1, with the first inhabitable sites due for August 2008. While there will be space for 48 units, the construction schedule will depend on how quickly the units are sold, Castellan says.
This kind of construction means nothing but good things for the City of Temiskaming Shores, says John Gauvreau, its economic development officer.
Based on data from prior high-level developments in the region, Gauvreau says he expects more than half of the new condo units to be filled by people from outside the Temiskaming Shores area. This will further reinforce the town’s attempts to promote itself as a “later in life” alternative to the Muskokas and Elliot Lake.
The development will also help contribute to housing trends that have emerged in the area, where homes are consistently being sold for 4 to 5 per cent higher than normal. Prices have been steadily rising in this way for the last year or two, Gauvreau says, and such construction should encourage even greater buyer confidence in the area.
