REI VALUE ADD SUCCESS STORY 001 🎉
Hey there! This will be the start of our “Success Story Series” where we’ll be sharing one of our REI Projects with you. We’ll share: Existing Condition (As-Is), Our Plans to Add Value, Permits, Process & Pain Points.
WELLAND, ONTARIO
Existing Condition (As-Is)
This was an existing 11-unit apartment building (10 legal units + 1 illegal). During our initial site visit, we noticed it had a solid structure, lots of parking in the rear, decent ceiling heights (that meet building code), and most importantly, had a basement laundry room!
Our Plans to Add Value
Our main focus was to convert the existing laundry room into a bachelor unit. However, after further investigation, we could take some space from the massive service room adjacent to the laundry room to make it a 1-bedroom unit! Additionally, since we were already going for permits for the laundry conversion, we decided to legalize the 11th illegal unit in the basement.
Permits, Process & Pain Points
Now that we had decided to convert this 10-unit building into a 12plex, the next steps were measuring, drafting & designing for this building, which didn’t take long, considering the existing conditions (2 existing stairwells were already there). One of the issues was providing a new laundry room, or in our case, a new laundry closet for all units to share! Lastly, one pain point from the city staff was making a stand to allow this project to bypass Site Plan Approval (SPA), which, after a few discussions, we won and avoided it completely!
Tags: Welland, Laundry Conversion, Building Code
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