Developer applies for 4th storey on downtown Charlottetown apartment building

A P.E.I. developer wants to build a 23-unit apartment building in downtown Charlottetown, but needs a zoning amendment to allow for the four-storey building.

Tim Banks has applied to council for the variance at 55 and 59 Richmond Street, and presented his plans at a public meeting Tuesday night. The current zoning would only allow a three-storey building.

Banks said the building would serve a growing trend in small cities.

"I call it a flight to the core," he said.

"What we're noticing across the country be it in Moncton, or in Halifax, or any other centre of a similar scale as Charlottetown there's a real flight to the downtown, and to reinvestment in the downtown cores."

Banks said the same trend is apparent in Charlottetown in recently-released numbers from the 2016 census, and his proposed building would help meet that demand in downtown Charlottetown.

The zoning also requires buildings be under 40 feet (12.2 metres) tall, and he also requested that the first-floor ceiling height be 9.5 feet (2.9 metres), rather than the required 13 feet (4 metres), to keep it under that total height.

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