The metamorphosis of downtown Barrie has begun.
A classic early 20th-century downtown city block, marked largely by two-storey commercial buildings, is making way for a 21st-century highrise, mixed-use development where hundreds of people are expected to call home in just a few years.
Demolition of the Dunlop Street West block, featuring the former Uptown Theatre, has started with crews working their way eastward from Mary Street.
“We are proceeding,” Debut Condos developer Gary Silverberg told BarrieToday. “The shovels are in the ground now.
"This is it, the beginning.”
The row of commercial buildings is coming down to make room for two 32-storey condo towers with 30-feet high, street-level retail and a link to a future market area, which is currently occupied by the city’s transit terminal.
The western portion of the block is being demolished with plans for the first tower to be developed in phase one of the project, to be followed by construction of the second tower. Silverberg says the development is expected to take three years, with occupancy to take place in about 40 months.
The result, Silverberg says, will be an exciting and vibrant “very, very urban setting.”
“I see one of the greatest downtown cores in Ontario. I see a fantastic city with excitement that’s revitalized in a way that speaks to people’s tastes and needs of today,” he said. “They’re revitalizing downtowns all over North America. This is just a great city that happened to be one of the ones in Canada that’s being revitalized first because of its phenomenal potential.”
It is one of several projects proposed for the core.
Work has been ongoing at the 10-storey Lakhouse condominium complex with 178 units on Dunlop Street East.
The SmartCentres development on 3.5 hectares — with plans for four buildings and about 1,700 residential units, commercial space, a hotel space and public corridors — has also started on Bradford Street.
At Dunlop and Bradford streets, there are also plans for a mixed-use development with three residential towers of up to 20 storeys including 600 residential units where students once attended Barrie Central Collegiate..
Michelle Banfield, Barrie’s director of development services, says there's a transformation taking place downtown.
“A lot of it does revolve around having more people living in the downtown, which I think all of us want to see” to achieve critical mass in the core, she said. “The buildings that are being proposed aren’t the buildings that were proposed 20 years ago.”
In addition to the large developments, she points to smaller projects taking place in the core, such as the 70 affordable housing units at Bayfield and Sophia streets.
The resulting density from the combined projects aligns with the provincial growth plan aimed to increase the population living in city urban growth centres, Banfield says.
The goal is to move away from reliance on personal vehicles with increased use of public transit — core values of the 15-minute city residential urban concept in which most necessary facilities are within walking or cycling distance.
What remains missing, however, is a grocery store.
That may well follow as more people move downtown, Banfield said.
