Owen Sound Housing gearing up to start Phase 3 of Odawa Heights

Owen Sound Housing Company is aiming to begin construction early this summer on its Odawa Heights development’s third phase, which will involve erecting the largest standalone building in the organization’s seven-decade history.

Chair Ruth Lovell Stanners said the five-storey building, which is to include 43 “affordable” units and 16 units with market rental rates, will complete the full build-out of the site on 8th Avenue East, near Notre Dame and Saint-Dominique-Savio schools.

“It’s the biggest phase that we’ve ever done in housing. It’s an ambitious project, but it’s really the most efficient use of the land that we have now. It will give us the greatest number of units that we can possibly get out of the property at this point,” she said in interview.

“That’s why it’s appealing to us to take this rather large step.”

Lovell Stanners said the goal is to have a final site plan application for Phase 3 in front of city council within the next month and begin construction at the end of June.

The organization expects that the first tenants will be able to move into the building in December 2021, provided everything goes as planned.

Owen Sound Housing Company, which was established in 1950 and is a parallel corporation to the Owen Sound Municipal Non-Profit Housing Co., purchased the vacant 4.2-acre property on 8th Avenue East in 2016 for what would become Odawa Heights.

It received site plan approval for a total of 90 units on the site.

The housing company received $2.55 million to complete the $4.2-million first phase of the project, which wrapped up in the summer of 2018 and included the construction of 28 units in seven buildings.

Twenty-two of those units are affordable, which means tenants are charged 80 per cent of market rent, while the other six are “market rent” units.

The housing company received $880,000 in government funding for Phase 2, which involved building six more affordable units and two market rent units. That work wrapped up last summer.

In January, provincial and federal representatives announced at Odawa Heights that the Owen Sound Housing Company would receive $6.2 million from the Canada-Ontario Community Housing Initiative and the Ontario Priorities Housing Initiative for Phase 3.

However, it will cost about $12 million to construct the final building.

At a meeting Monday night, city council agreed to loan Owen Sound Housing Company just over $3.1 million to help it complete Phase 3.

Director of corporate services Kate Allan told council that the city expects the “construction financing” will be required in March 2021 and will be repaid by October 2021 once the organization receives long-term financing upon completing the project.

The city will be charging 2.5 per cent interest on the loan, which will generate about $6,500 in revenue for each month the loan is outstanding, she said.

“That being said, the city would likely draw on our own line of credit in order to facilitate this loan, so our own interest costs would balance out any revenue to have a nil-effect on our bottom line,” she said.

“Anecdotally, I’ll just add that we recognize how important this development is to the City of Owen Sound and the great need for housing.”

Owen Sound also provided Owen Sound Housing Company with an $800,000 loan in 2017 to help finance Phase 1 of the project. About $720,000 is outstanding, Allan said, and is expected to be paid in full in 2022.

Lovell Stanners said the organization will also be asking Grey County for a $3.1 million loan for Phase 3.

County housing director Anne Marie Shaw said she is bringing a report to council May 28 to assist with that construction loan financing.

Lovell Stanners said the loans will carry the project over until the organization can receive a mortgage, once construction is complete, she said.

“We see ourselves needing a mortgage of about $6 million, which we’ve worked all out in a business plan,” she said.

The plan for Phase 3 comes amid a severe shortage of affordable housing in Owen Sound, which has a rental vacancy rate of about 1.9 per cent, according to the latest figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

As of Wednesday, there were about 700 Grey County residents on a waiting list for county housing.

Owen Sound Housing and the Owen Sound Municipal Non-Profit Housing Corp. also provide affordable housing at the 50-unit Bayfield Landing, 90-unit Ordnance Park and 60-unit Bluewater Ridge.