DEVELOPING STORIES
/WASHINGTON COURT REDEVELOPMENT APPROVED
But The Building Remains Empty Seven Years Later
by Jake McGrail
(click images to enlarge)
the Washington Court building (Ewan Streit photo)
For just about seven years now, the Washington Court apartment building has stood empty at the corner of Thurlow and Nelson, after a fire damaged the structure and forced out more than 80 tenants in 2018.
At the time, news reports estimated that it would take about a year — give or take a few months — for the building to be ready to accept new tenants. That timeline didn’t quite pan out.
The primary issue, as it turned out, was that while the owners of the building aimed to do a simple repair job to get the 44 homes back on the market, a consultation with the city led to a much longer list of upgrades that needed to be done inside the over 100-year-old building - things like seismic upgrades and changes to safety systems.
An Artistic rendering of the restored building (stantec architecture/lucky za investments)
That’s all according to architect Alan Endall, in an interview with storeys.com in 2023. That was when his firm, Stantec Architecture, submitted an application to restore the apartments while also turning Washington Court from a five-storey building to an eight-storey one, and nearly doubling the total number of homes up to 80.
Endall, the project lead, described the task ahead as a total rebuild of the interior, while keeping the exterior the same. That second part is important, as Washington Court is a heritage building and thus can’t be totally torn down and replaced with a wholly different structure.
The building definitely deserves its heritage status, as it was built all the way back in 1910. At the time, it was one of the tallest apartment buildings in the West End, although today it’s dwarfed by the decidedly newer towers in its immediate vicinity.
2018 was also not the first time that Washington Court was damaged by fire, as back in 1966 a blaze destroyed the then-sixth floor of the building, which was removed entirely in the aftermath. Unlike the ‘60s, however, this decade has yet to see anyone actually live in the building.
That 2023 application certainly carried some optimism with it, and after a long process a development permit was issued by the city in January of this year. But now it’s unclear whether there’s a plan in place to actually follow through with said plan.
another rendering of the area (stantec architecture/lucky za investments)
The owners of the lot, Lucky ZA Investments, have very little information about their organization available publicly and it seems to have no website or social media to speak of. Stantec Architecture doesn’t have any mention of Washington Court on their own site, and Alan Endall (seemingly the last person from the developers’ side who publicly commented on the project) doesn’t appear to work for the company anymore.
None of that is very promising for tangible progress being made towards getting tenants into the historic building once again. Until then, Washington Court will remain fenced off and standing empty.
