A high-end construction project near Victoria's Inner Harbour is months behind schedule as crews take on the Herculean task of keeping several massive heritage walls upright.
Customs House on Government Street, a commercial building originally built in 1898, is being transformed into luxury condos with storefront spaces and a clear view of the harbour.
Construction began in 2017 and last year the front of the building was demolished. The original walls of the building are being held up with braces to retain its historic exterior, while the inside is being completely rebuilt.
But efforts to maintain the building's façade are exactly what has held up the project.
"We are probably a little bit behind schedule due to the complexity of holding up the heritage walls," said Stan Sipos, owner of development company Cielo Properties. "That engineering requirement to keep those walls up and to go down and to create the underground parkade has been probably the most challenging project I have ever undertaken."
The finished building will include new seismic specifications, because as Sipos and his crews discovered, the walls were sitting on less-than-ideal foundations.
"The magnitude of weight on those walls is staggering," he said. "I've got to say, we never even realized how precarious it all is until you start excavating and you realize that those walls are just sitting on a rubble foundation."
Sipos said the project is about three to four months behind schedule, but he's still hopeful crews can make up that time before the project's expected completion date of fall 2020.
When finished, the development will house 57 large high-end units that are being sold for a range of prices. Some condos have already gone for around $600,000, while the most expensive unit – the penthouse – has been sold to an unknown buyer for nearly $11 million.
Sipos said so far, the development is about 80 per cent sold. He believes the introduction of B.C.'s foreign buyers tax may have slowed down sales.
"Homes that are, say, in excess of $1.5 or $2 million, I'm not sure that we should be completely eliminating foreign buyers, and I don't know that American consumers are foreign buyers," he said.
Sotheby's International Realty says luxury home sales have fallen so far this year in hot housing markets like Toronto and Vancouver, and CEO Brad Henderson has cited a new stress test as well as a hike in the foreign buyers tax as potential factors.
