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Plan is now to demolish and build a new tower.

Groupe Mach to replace former DND building on O’Connor Street with new residential tower

David Salim, OBJ
October 31, 2023

A Montreal firm that is now one of Ottawa’s biggest office landlords says it plans to demolish a former government building on O’Connor Street and replace it with a residential highrise containing up to 400 rental units.

Groupe Mach purchased the now-vacant 14-storey building at 110 O’Connor St. on the corner of Slater Street from Cominar REIT for $40 million in 2021.

Groupe Mach president Vincent Chiara told OBJ this week the firm is likely going to tear down the existing structure that dates from the early 1970s and previously served as an office for the Department of National Defence.

He said the company is looking at a couple of different proposals that would see an 18- to 20-storey highrise with between 350 and 400 rental apartments constructed on the property.

As office vacancies continue to rise and the rental housing market tightens, the idea of converting outdated downtown office towers to residential projects has become a trendy topic in Ottawa real estate.

Several local developers, including CLV Group, District Realty and Katasa, have completed conversions in the city’s core in the past few years, and more projects are in the pipeline.

Chiara said his firm considered a conversion at 110 O’Connor. But after crunching the numbers, Groupe Mach determined it didn’t make financial sense to try to salvage the current building’s skeleton and transform the interior into apartments.

“A lot of those existing buildings don’t convert easily, and the costs of conversion are usually higher than building from scratch,” Chiara said in an interview from Montreal on Monday. “As soon as city officials give us the (green light for demolition), we’re ready to go.”

The O’Connor Street deal is just one of a series of headline-grabbing recent transactions in Ottawa for Groupe Mach, which has acquired 16 properties in the National Capital Region over the past two and a half years.

“We like (the Ottawa) market,” Chiara explained. “We like the stability, we like the quality of the tenancy, we like the professionalism that’s there with our suppliers. It’s a strong market that’s shown a lot of diversity.”

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https://obj.ca/groupe-mach-to-replac...dential-tower/