Image: Cherise Letson / Huddle
An uptown Saint John heritage building will be getting some much-needed TLC from its new owners.
Forty-six Princess Street, also known as the “Ritchie Building,” home to the popular Saint John bar, O’Leary’s, has been purchased by the McCole Group.
The company is run by business partners Brendan McClure and Thomas Cole, who recently moved to New Brunswick from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. After investing in some properties back home, McClure said they saw an opportunity in New Brunswick.
“We decided to start looking elsewhere and we noticed Saint John has some good numbers. We ended up flying out here a few times to check stuff out, and in 2019 we bought our first 12-unit out here,” said McClure in an interview with Huddle.
“In 2020, we ended up buying quite a few more and we’re now at 167 doors out here and we both moved out here. We’re residents and we have no intentions of going back.”
McClure and Cole found out about the Ritchie building through Troy Nesbitt of Brunswick Brokers, with whom they’ve worked previously. The building wasn’t listed publicly, but Nesbitt knew the owners were looking to sell to the right buyer and facilitated the connection.
“Everything we’ve done in the past has been rehab projects. We like taking something from not-so-good and bringing it to what it can be today,” said McClure. “This project just fit the bill. We’ve done a few other rehab projects, but this one was on a whole other level. We’ve also never worked with heritage.”
The building’s commercial tenants on the ground floor, O’Leary’s, Roy’s Army Surplus and Snips hair studio will remain. The major renovations will take place upstairs, which up until now has been used for storage and has fallen into disrepair.
“I don’t know how many more years it could have sat without having any heat or air conditioning … The longer the building sat here vacant, the more damage was being done upstairs,” said McClure.
The plan is to construct 15 one- and two-bedroom apartments upstairs. McClure hasn’t yet determined rental prices but says the majority will be over $1,000 a month because of renovation costs.
“I can tell you that it won’t be the top-end of rents for the uptown. There will be some that are much higher than ours,” he said. “But the majority will be over $1,000, which is very different for our portfolio.”
He says their other buildings have rents between $800 and $900 a month. But due to the extent of the renovations needed, the price point needs to be higher in order to make the project work.
This is a new one for us, but in order to make the project work, with the cost of all the heritage upgrades, the remediation of the project, we need to bring in a new water line into the building … the numbers only made sense adding higher rents,” he said.
Work started on the building a few weeks ago, with the goal of having all the units fully rented within a year.
“When we first got out here, we didn’t think there was a possibility that we’d be doing a building of this size,” said McClure. “But it happened quickly and we’re excited to be given the opportunity to do it.”
Cherise Letson is the associate editor of Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
