Farhi transforms office building into residences, pledges hundreds more amid improving relations with city hall

A new incentive from city hall has London's largest landowner hopeful for more conversions in the future, CTV London's Daryl Newcombe reports.

Downtown London’s largest landowner is praising London City Hall’s financial incentive to turn vacant office space into new residential units.

On Thursday, Shmuel Farhi of Farhi Holdings Corporation led a tour of Richmond Square (685 Richmond St.) where three floors within the former office building have been converted into 41 apartments.

“Those conversions cannot be done without the help of the city and the federal government. (It’s) very challenging to convert an office to residential,” Farhi explains.

The project was made possible by City Hall’s Office-to-Residential Conversion Program that provides a financial incentive that helps offset the cost of upgrading the vacant office space to meet residential building code and safety standards.

The program utilizes money previously provided to City Hall from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund.

“We found a pathway to a program that now has 200,000ft² of office space, either converted or in the process of being converted,” Mayor Josh Morgan said after the tour. “It’s vacant office space in our downtown core that is being changed into homes.”

The office vacancy rate in Downtown London has been hovering around 30 per cent.

“When you have people living downtown, you have businesses that are able to thrive,” explains Peter Fragiskatos, MP London Centre. “The people that live at this particular location will be able to go to local bars, local restaurants, and the Grand theater is down the street.”

Just a month after welcoming its first residents, Farhi says the building is already at 73 per cent occupancy.

He’s now pledging to convert more of his vacant downtown space.

“Our intention is to have close to 300 units in the next 2 to 3 years,” he tells CTV News. “The more buildings you convert with the help of (government), the more people you bring to downtown who support the good fabric of the community.”

Farhi says his relationship with London City Hall has improved greatly over the last four years.

“I think we turned the page,” he explains. “I had a heart-to-heart talk with Josh (Morgan) and other politicians and support staff. I said, look, if you want a partnership with us, we will come and do things. And we doing by doing, not by talking.”

Morgan has a similar perspective on the new level of cooperation between Farhi and City Hall.

“You can score a bunch of political points for criticizing him, but that actually doesn’t get anything done for Londoners,” Morgan says. “What gets things done is partnerships. What gets things done is designing programs that actually get people to move on the properties they have.”

Farhi says he’ll be announcing details about his next projects in Downtown London soon.