Sudbury developer aims to start building Brewer Lofts this year

Morning North8:55Brewers Lofts project update

We visit Brewers Lofts, a new residential project that would see the old Northern Breweries building transformed into residential lofts. The CBC's Olivia Stefanovich joined Greg Oldenburg, the developer of Brewers Lofts for tour and update of the project.The site of the old Northern Breweries building in Sudbury is getting ready for a major face lift.

A sales office for the new loft-condominium project called Brewer Lofts is expected to open in the coming weeks and the developer hopes to sell enough condos to enableconstruction to move ahead this year.

The old building no longer contains beer cases and fermenting tanks, but developer Greg Oldenburg said he plans to refill the buildings vast, empty rooms with dozens of living spaces.

You can buy [a] big house, small house, lake house, valley house, whatever, but there really isnt a loft-condominium like this, he said.

'Appeal' for something different

The lofts range in size from 600 to 2,500 square feet. The 1,000 square-foot lofts cost around $380,000 about $100,000 above the average home price in Sudbury.

Royal LePage sales representative Gwen Price said the price is typical for new condo developments in the city.

She said theres a good chance the project will succeed.

There will be always an appeal to people to have something different from everyone else, to say I live at this address, she said.

Price added theres reason to believe the project will be successful because there arent any lofts on the market in Sudbury.

I think its going toappeal to an upscale client, also young professionals, she said.

So its not just necessarily going to be the baby boom generation looking in there.

Oldenburg said hes sold 10out of the 50 lofts, and added he needs to sell about 35 lofts to finance construction.