Office tower on Jasper Avenue to be partly converted into residential complex

Floors of unused office space in the Standard Life building on Jasper Avenue will be converted to housing. CTV News Edmonton's Connor Hogg takes a tour.

Plans are in place to convert much of a major downtown Edmonton office building into housing, retail and recreational space.

Leder Investments recently bought the 19-storey tower wedged between 104 and 105 streets on the south side of Jasper Avenue for $12.5 million.

It will be rechristened The Standard, partly to acknowledge its original moniker, Standard Life Centre, but also because Leder wants it to be seen as a place that sets a standard.

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“It’s sort of a nod to the past, but also how we want to be, in a market setting, the standard for amenities and the future for properties like this where they’re trying to attract people,” Kevin Petterson, Leder’s vice-president of real estate, told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday.

Currently, the property known as 10405 Jasper Avenue is half empty, but the Edmonton-based firm envisions a project that will bring more people to it.

Petterson says the company is looking at several uses for the complex, including a food hall, pickleball and basketball courts, golf simulators, a rooftop patio restaurant and daycare services to go with converting floors 12 through 19 to residential.

He said they’re “trying to step up the game with respect to the amenities” to differentiate the building given how many straight office towers like it exist downtown.

“There’s obviously a lot of competition for office tenancies right now, and depending on which building you are, it’s like either you’ve got a vacancy problem, a massive vacancy problem, or not a lot of vacancy problem at all if you’re a newer building,” Petterson told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday.

“The buildings that are being evaluated for repositioning as residential have different fundamentals, and depending on what your fundamentals are, it’ll be feasible or not.”

Petterson said Leder hopes to have development permits in place for The Standard next year.

City Councillor Anne Stevenson says private projects like these are good for everyone because they increase density downtown with fewer start-up costs.

“The great thing about office conversions is that we don’t have any new roads to plow, we don’t have any new transit services we need to provide, we don’t have any new parks that we need to build,” said Stevenson, who represents Ward O-day’min. “They’re already all here.”

The city offers support for office building conversions into residential space through its permitting process and through grants and financial incentives.

She said office conversions “solve two problems at once” by filling vacant commercial space and “adding more life and vibrancy” with more people living downtown.

“Bringing more residents to the core is great for vibrancy, and particularly that 24/7 vibrancy,” Stevenson said.

“Even before the pandemic, what we typically saw was that downtown would sort of empty out after 5 p.m. Having residents living down here means that you get that street life, that activity all through the evening and night.”