Charlottetown hopes rental crunch will end with new developments

There's optimism in Charlottetown about the number of new rental units set for construction in 2018.

So far, there have been 820 units, including townhouses, approved for construction. That's up from last year when only about 135 units, including townhouses, were built in the city.

"We are quite encouraged by those numbers and I assume they will get better as the year goes on," said Coun.Greg Rivard,chair of the planning and heritagecommittee.

Last year the vacancy rate hit .09 per cent, so Rivard saidthe units will be a welcome addition.

"There's all sorts of needs, and again with the aging demographic of Charlottetown, or maybe even Prince Edward Island or Canada in that sense there always has to be transition housing and alternative for people who are looking to downsize or something different," he said. "We're trying to get ahead of the curve."

New developments

One of the newest approved buildings is at 494 Queen Street, next to the Superstore. Tim Banks is developing a 65 to 80 unit building that will have mixed one and two-bedroom apartments.

He is also working on another proposal for a higher-end building of close to 100 units forthe waterfront behind 13 Haviland Street. Bankshas presented the plan to the Heritage Board, but still has to submit an official proposal which will have to go through the design review process.

Banks said he hopes to get started soon but he has to get the numbers right.

"The market in Charlottetownfor construction cost is something that we have to deal with, simply because when you go to the higher building structures it involvessteel and concrete and we need to make sure we get a return on our investment," he said. "So we need to wait until we get our prices in before we again say we're going to pull the trigger."

Staff at the city say the higher numbers this year may be due to the fact that many of the projects are larger scale, and developers have been working on them for a while.