Mayfair block plans outlined to Kitchener council
This article was written by Terry Pender and published by The Waterloo Region Record on June 14, 2011.
KITCHENER — In 2013, the Mayfair Hotel is scheduled to become a cultural centre and community hub for the downtown, city councillors were told Monday.
A local trio of experienced businesspeople are partnering with Andrin Investments Limited to turn the 106-year-old Mayfair at 11 Young St. and the building next door at 156-158 King St. West into a boutique hotel, spa, restaurant and bar.
Kitchener Meets Its Waterloo – MacLean’s Magazine
This article was written by John English and published by Maclean’s Magazine on July 28, 2011.
Canada’s old ‘German capital’ is once again learning the art – and politics – of reinvention.
In its postwar heyday, Kitchener was a lunch-bucket town. Most men and many women rose before six, packed their sandwich and thermos, and walked, rode the bus, or briefly drove to the large brick factories circling the city’s downtown. On the city’s western edge, assembly lines rolled out nearly all of Canada’s tires in “Canada’s Akron.” Closer to downtown, they made boots and condoms at Kaufman Rubber; shirts at Cluett Peabody and John Forsyth; leather goods at the Breithaupt and Lang tanneries; radios and Canada’s first colour television at Electrohome; and sausages and the local delicacy, pigtails, at J.M. Schneider’s.
Creating ‘cool’ spaces for the Tech Triangle
This article was originally written by Jennifer Lewington and published August 8, 2011 by the Globe and Mail.
The four-storey factory had been on the market for a year before Toronto developer David Gibson considered buying it. Looking at the 1904 property, he saw something others had missed: the chance to transform a brick-and-beam building into premium office space for Waterloo’s technology sector.
The former car-parts factory stretches over a block of Kitchener’s old warehouse district. “It was pretty gruesome, but you could see the opportunities here,” Mr. Gibson recalls of his first impressions of 51 Breithaupt St. in 2009. The building at the former Collins & Aikman plant still housed mammoth machinery. The 4.3-acre site also needed an environmental cleanup – a potential financial risk. (more…)
Hopeful Signs in Kitchener’s Core
This editorial was originally published by The Waterloo Region Record on June 6, 2011.
The renewal of downtown Kitchener has moved into another interesting phase as work crews have started to restore the Breithaupt Block. The developers, Perimeter Development Corp. and Allied Properties REIT, will transform the block in a way that the original owners and workers at the site could never have imagined.
The first building in the block was built in 1902 for the Merchants Rubber Co., which produced rubber for footwear. The automotive industry later used buildings that were added to the property. The last company was the International Automotive Components Group, which left in 2008. (more…)
Breithaupt Block Development Begins
This article by Rose Simone appeared in The Waterloo Region Record on May 26, 2011.
KITCHENER – The City’s transformation from rubber and steel to software and information continues.
Sandblasting crews will begin work today on a $35-million redevelopment to turn six Breithaupt Block industrial buildings into 175,000 square feet of office space for the creative information technology age.
The buildings that used to manufacture rubber and automotive parts are on Breithaupt Street between King and Waterloo streets in the old industrial heart of Kitchener. (more…)