After many false starts by developers before him, Percy Wilbur says he’s ready to make something out of 91 King Street in uptown Saint John.
The building, commonly known as the “old Woolworths” or the “old Bargain Shop” at the top of King Street, has been purchased by Wilbur, who is behind other notable uptown developments, One Charlotte Street and The Wentworth apartment complex.
“The focus of my development projects in the last four or five years has always been finding dilapidated properties and doing something with them,” said Wilbur in an interview with Huddle. “And this meets all the criteria and checks all the boxes in that regard. It’s been on my radar for a while.”
Wilbur said he has no solid plans yet for the building. The task now is to evaluate the land and structure to see what can be done. This includes determining whether or not the structure itself is worth saving, or whether its best to demolish it and build from scratch
“We know that the concrete is fine and the brickwork and that would need a little bit of work,” said Wilbur. “But we don’t know the capacity of the steel components of the building, because the roof has been leaking for over 12 years and we don’t know what kind of damage that’s caused to the steel structure within the building. That will determine whether or not we tear it down or keep it.”
Regardless of whether the building remains or gets torn down for a new structure, Wilbur said the 91 King Street development will be heavily residential.
“It will probably [have] commercial aspect, but definitely the property will most likely take on a heavy residential component,” he said. “Commercial at this point, if you take a walk around Brunswick Square and Market Square, it’s pretty dismal. Commercial is pretty risky at this point so that’s why the focus would be residential.”
The goal to have a design plan ready to bring to the city by the end of February 2021.
Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce CEO David Duplisea says it’s good news the building has been purchased by a local developer with a track record like Wilbur.
“We’re very excited to see that it has been purchased and there are plans to develop it,” said Duplisea. “Percy Wilbur has a great reputation in town. He’s developed a number of other buildings, so we’re excited to see movement on that.”
The building had been vacant for more than a decade and has changed hands between hopeful developers over the years, but nothing coming to fruition. But Duplisea feels positive that something will finally be done with the property
“I think moving forward the community is excited, the community has been looking for something there for a long time,” he said .”We had a number of false starts and got our hopes up only to have them dashed again, but this time we’re pretty confident that this will be a go-ahead and things will work out.”
Potential To Help Retail and Commercial Growth?
Though some developers like Wilbur may be cautious about developing new commercial space in the uptown, residential developments like The Wentworth (one of Wilbur’s), The Telegraph, and The Atlantic all help grow the population of the uptown core. This could help fuel more commercial development in the future.
“The more people we have living uptown better Saint John will be. You have proper economies of scale. You got people living uptown and they will put a demand on retail following and commercial following,” says Wilbur.
“There’s already a lot of interest in particular aspects of commercial that the residents of uptown are asking for and hopefully with more people living uptown that demand will be met and more vacant properties will be filled.”
Duplisea said growing the tax base in the city centre is critical to secure future commercial development.
“We have to increase the tax base here in the core and development like this will not only increase the tax base themselves, but it will serve as an attraction and as a magnet as well for other development to occur that would further increase the tax base,” he said
But Duplisea said it’s important that future development in the core is balanced with affordability.
“There are people moving into the city, younger people moving in, people buying up property, that has opened up the whole social problem of what about affordable housing and we have to keep out eye on that balance so we don’t over gentrify because then nobody can afford to live here,” he said. “We always have to keep our eye on the balance between economic development, tax base growth, and still have a liveable city that people can afford to live in.”
Cherise Letson is a writer for Huddle Today, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
