[Moncton] St. Bernard Place | 18 Storeys | Proposed
 

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Site location

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Birds eye view

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Birds eye view

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Rear birds eye view

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Ground floor plan

This building will be located on the vacant parking lot along the north side of St Bernards Church, on the SE corner of Botsford and Victoria Streets.

The plan is for 3 levels of underground parking, a two storey podium (townhomes), a seven storey tower capped by a two level penthouse, and a mechanical floor.

This is a huge development for the east end of downtown, and will be a larger project than FiveFive Queen was. These two buildings are close to one another, and will complement each other well. The east end is being transformed, and if successful, I'm sure we will see other similar buildings in the neighbourhood in the future.

This project was approved last evening by Moncton PAC, including the following variances:

- a parking garage below the minimum geodetic elevation for a 12 story building with approximately 148 units
- increase the permitted height of the building to be more than 19 metres
- provide non- traditional material on portions of the building
- not provide the step-back on the Wesley Street side
- not provide jogs and recesses along the façades of the building
- increase the maximum setback in one section of the facade facing Victoria (3.5 to 3.9)
- reduce the size of the balconies on one floor
- reduce the ground floor fenestration ratio on Victoria 25% to 24.5% and Wesley 25% to 0%

CBC article:

Moncton planning committee OKs 12-storey downtown apartment building
Developer hopes to start construction later this year
Shane Magee · CBC News · Posted: Feb 25, 2021 7:00 AM AT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-b...ttee-1.5926692

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A few additional tidbits:

- the third floor units will have rooftop garden patio terraces.
- the glass fronted penthouse units will be two storey.
- pet friendly building, with a pet wash station in the garage
- bicycle storage
- charging stations for electric vehicles
- car share program for tenants.
- they very definitely want to have shovels in the ground by September or October.

I wonder if the city could bury the electric power lines at the same time. They did this for FiveFive Queen; I think St. Bernard Square should have the same treatment. Now would be the time to do it! :yes:

Old clay water & sewer pipes! I wonder how old those are? And one would think that they'd take the opportunity to bury the electrical lines at the same time.

This is a great project for downtown Moncton. Slowly but surely the amount of surface parking is being reduced.

I would love to see the lot across from the NBTel tower redeveloped next. If the Corp owns it it may not be possible to redevelop..

This is the lot I'd most like to see developed downtown aside from Downing street. Even a modest proposal at this site in the 6-storey range would have a huge impact on the east end of downtown.

I presume you're referring to that umpaved parking lot across Queen Street from the NBTel Tower. :rolleyes:

If there is a single lot downtown absolutely begging for high rise development, this is it - especially with all the substantial buildings in the immediate neighbourhood.

This lot is big enough for a substantial residential or mixed use tower, and, when combined with St. Bernard Square, The city hall complex, FiveFive Queen, the Blue Cross Centre, the Marriott Suites Hotel, Assumption Place and the Delta Hotel would actually 100% give this small area of the east end of the downtown core the critical mass necessary to actually give Moncton a skyline. :yes:

Oh, if only we could simply snap our fingers and conjure it into existence..........

I thought that lot was used by the church for parking on Sundays?

Perhaps so, but during the rest of the week it is a private parking lot (by permit only), and thus a prime example of "dead space" within the downtown core. People park there when they are at work, but the lot becomes a barren wasteland in the evening, instead of being used by patrons of downtown restaurants and pubs. Before the Boot-Nazis got the boot, it was a prime location for them to conduct their nefarious trade.

In addition to being an urban dead space, it is poorly maintained, unpaved and potholed. It is a stain in the downtown core. :yuck:

Just imagine if it were replaced with a 12-15 storey mixed use building with underground parking and street level commercial/retail. :)

So with the city hall & BMO buildings, 55 Queen, St. Bernard's Square, plus a new 12-15 floor residential tower, any ground floor retail/hospitality businesses there would have hundreds of potential customers within a 2 minute walk!

And yes that lot currently is quite ugly.

my mother attends St. John's United. It used to be used by that congregation and St. bernards. About 2 years ago mom came out of church and a note was on the windshield saying after a certain date her car would be booted. Not sure what the status is now.

Was this the NBtel lot on weekdays or a private lot.

I think they may have over estimated the height of St. Bernard’s church, I was just looking at it on google maps street view and it is no where near the height of a 12 floor building. Though in their drawings the church roof seems to peak at 10 stories high. Just a funny observation

I just noticed something interesting on the "bird's-eye" views above.

The townhome units facing Botsford Street are described as "work/live townhouses." I presume that they are designed to accommodate small "in home" businesses, perhaps professional offices or something along those lines, where you live in one portion of the unit, but see clients in another portion.

If so, this is an interesting concept. The other townhome units seem to be standard townhouses.

Bleh. This would be far better with street-fronted retail on either Wesley or Botsford or both. There's enough sq. footage for a couple decent store footprints.

I rather like the townhouse podium on this building. I don't necessarily think all podiums need to have ground floor retail.

Having said this though, if we get another couple of residential towers in the downtown east end, there will be a need for new neighbourhood retail in the area, especially a pharmacy, perhaps a small urban format grocery store and convenience retailers. I'm sure other new mixed use developments in the area will have street level retail components.

I imagine the owners of Gahan House are OK with having all those potential customers living right next door!

Living on PEI, BUT raised in Moncton, I wonder after the pandemic how if my former city SJ, freddy, Hfx and PEI continue to grow. So my question is there enough maritime growth to sustain the bigger projects, residential housing that appears to be going on in most areas?

Don't forget that prepandemic, all 5 cities had HOT residential markets, with very little vacancy available to them. And even through the pandemic, our economies have kept chugging along and demand if anything has INCREASED.

So at least for the next decade, we should have more than enough growth potential to support all these projects, if not more.

Only through immigration.

Our domestic Maritime birth rate will result in a contracting population, so growth will require both interprovincial and international migration.

Happily, I think both will continue to occur. The Maritimes continue to be a low cost place to live in the country, and people from Ontario and BC are starting to take notice. The lifestyle down here can also be appealing for those other Canadians tiring of hour long commutes to get to and back from work.

On the international front, the federal government has become more supportive to the idea of spreading out immigration across the country, and not just in the country's half dozen larger cities. This is good for the overall national economy. All of the larger cities in the region are benefitting.

Article about St. Bernard Square in the T&T today.

Not too much more than we already knew, but there were two interesting tidbits.

- The townhouse podium is described as having a "brownstone" facade, and this is intended to complement the look of St. Bernard's Church next door.
- The setback of the tower along the front of the podium on Botsford Street is 20 feet, and this is intended so that the view of the front of the church is unobstructed to southbound traffic on Botsford Street.

These two architectural elements were designed with the next door church in mind.

Wow! Hats of to them. It is obvious that they are thoughtful, respectful and neighbor friendly in the way that they are entering the neighborhood. This type of synergy is great to see.

What an awesome project. Can't wait to see the upper floor plans and pricing. I'm hoping to retire in 5 years. Nice to see so many great options to downsize to in the downtown area.

Apparently soil sampling is underway at the St-Bernard Square site.

The city has approved a $935k contract to refurbish Wesley and Victoria Streets adjacent to the St. Bernard Square site. Components of the contract include street reconstruction, water main renewal, sewer renewal and storm sewer installation. Sadly, there is no mention of burial of electrical and communications infrastructure. :(

I wonder if that becomes a priority of the province since its owned by NB power.

I don't think the provincial government has to be involved, the city can speak directly with NB Power. This is arguably the biggest advantage of the Crown Corporation model.

Serious question: When they do the upgrades to the water & sewer services, can they simultaneously bury the electrical wires/cables? I'm also thinking about the big St. George Street project that's planned for the future. There's a huge mess of wires/poles all along the street that look terrible.

They can bury the wires all they want to. But they don't want to because when they need to get at them for repairs, replacement, whatever, the costs are huge compared to overhead wires. I don't blame them. But I would rather see no wires than overhead 8 days a week.
I live in a neighbourhood where they ran the wires down everyone's backyards. Not only that, they put their streetlights on nice, ever lasting concrete poles. Seemed like a good idea I suppose, no wires up and down the streets, and light poles that last decades. Win - win, right? Now the concrete is past its best before date, and every time the power goes out for reasons that require that their trucks get close to those backyard lines, residents end up with huge trucks in their backyards and tire ruts in their lawns for a job that can take twice as long as it would had the lines been on the side of the road.
Seems like a no=brainer to bury the lines, but it is us who pay handsomely down the road for that. As a rate payer, with my rates paying for massive NB POwer debt, do I want buried lines or lower costs? I want buried lines of course. Let my children pay for it. Seems to have worked well these past several decades.

I do not pretend to be an expert in this field but buried wires would avoid many of the environmental issues NB Power deal on a daily basis. I.e. Wind, rain, snow, lightning strikes, etc.

I see this issue similar to the argument for or against roundabouts. Roundabouts make NO SENSE at all it you only look at the upfront costs BUT make complete sense when you factor in the life-time costs.

Agreed. Buried utilities rarely require repair or maintenance, and disruptions are exceedingly uncommon, but, when repairs are necessary, they will not be cheap or quick.

On the whole, I am a strong proponent of buried utilities, especially in dense urban cores.

My father was a power engineer for the City of Summerside and he told me that the city had no power lines downtown, and had a list of streets to burry power lines in similar to a list of streets to infill ditches or a list of streets that need to be paved. The benefit in Summerside’s case was they owned their own municipal power company. Moncton does not have that luxury.

From the 20 Record Street thread - Agree with MonctonRad that we'll see the crane there before we see it at St. Bernard's Square. It looks like Lafford is wanting to get going on their project ASAP. There's workers on the site every time I drive by.

Valdo Grandmaison from Frederic Properties said his aim is to start construction in late Sept. or Oct. I think October is more likely since the city has to upgrade the old clay water & sewer lines on Wesley and Victoria Streets which is slated to happen from August to October.

Two big downtown projects for Moncton with underground parking, filling in vacant land. Just what the city wants - densification, tax base, people living downtown.

:previous:

So much excavation will be needed for St. Bernard Square, I would not be surprised to not see a crane on site until spring 2022.

Good point. If I'm not mistaken, the underground parking will be 3 floors deep.

I found out that the Victoria street reconstruction, watermain renewal and sewage separation project will not begin until August 16th with a finishing date of October 12th. So unless they plan to begin digging the underground parking along side the Victoria street renewal, then we may not see them break ground until October or even possibly spring of 2022. This is all just a guess by me as I don’t have any insider information.

https://moncton.maps.arcgis.com/apps...7e3037e8b6cc58

Valdo Grandmaison, owner of Frederic Properties Corp. said in February that he hopes to start construction in late Sept. or early Oct. once the city has upgraded the underground services on Victoria and Wesley streets. I hope the city gets the work done on schedule so the developer can get going. It's a major project for Moncton.

I see no reason why they couldn't start excavation for the three levels of underground parking at the same time as the street and infrastructure improvements on Victoria and Wesley.

I still don't necessarily expect to see the tower crane at St Bernard Square however until next spring.

I was just thinking the same thing. They could do site prep while the city does the street work. The Record street project got a bunch of materials on site before it was even approved so I don’t see why this project couldn’t do something similar.

It would be nice to see this project get going sooner. With 148 units just steps away from Main Street, it will be a major boost to downtown. And downtown could really use more people to support the businesses.

You may have been right MonctonRad. Driving by the site tonight I saw a piece of heavy equipment and a metal storage container on the property. I don't think the city uses storage containers when they do street work, do they? So Frederic Properties could at least do some site preparation now, and then be all ready to start the excavation when the time comes. If this is what's happening, I think it's a good sign. It tells me that Mr. Grandmaison wants to get going on the project as soon as he can.

:previous:

Good news. I won't get too excited though until I see construction fencing around the site. :)

It was a bulldozer so I'd say they're going to remove the asphalt to get the property ready for excavation. Might as well do that now, no need to wait.

Somebody has been on the site. I noticed this morning that there is now some fencing on one side of the container and a pile of gravel on the other side. Again, I can't see why the developer couldn't start site prep before/while the city is doing the street work they've planned for August. At least they should be able to remove the old asphalt from the property.

A lot of activity has been happening on the land. Large amount of earth, underground concrete sewer pipes, traffic cones etc. It looks like it's being used as a staging area for the city in preparation for the underground work they'll be doing on Wesley and Victoria. I forget how long it's supposed to take, but hopefully Frederic Properties can get going on their project this fall.

Valdo Grandmaison, owner of Frederic Properties, had said that the aim was to start his project in late September or October. It would be dependent on the city finishing their underground work on Victoria & Wesley streets. Driving by the area this morning, it looks like the city is a long way from finishing their work.

So, of all the major projects slated to get started in Moncton this year, this is the only one still pending. I presume this is because the city is still using this lot as a staging area for the infrastructure work on the adjacent roadways.

Grandmaison must be tearing his hair out by the roots. The window of the fall construction season is rapidly narrowing. There will be a lot of digging necessary for the underground parking structure.

There's going to be 3 levels of underground parking. I'm not sure how long it would take to excavate, but it sounds like a major undertaking. If I were a betting man, I'd say that they won't start until next year.

Once you get ~8 feet down winter shouldn't matter all that much, right?