A newly proposed set of apartment complexes in Duncan is trying to bridge the gap between affordability and feasibility.
Guy Bouchard is the CEO of Top Down Investments and he says that the main goal of the new development at Price Place is to create affordable units.
“What we tried to do is just create as much density as we can and we’ve designed the building in a way to reduce the footprint of the units so that they can be offered at a lower price because it just winds up coming down to math,” he says.
That math according to Bouchard is the key to offering units at a lower price. The less square footage in a unit, the cheaper it is.
“The only way to lower the cost of housing is to reduce the footprint of the unit so that the math still works and people still have a functional living space.”
Bouchard says that the two development sites will each have 70 of what he calls “micro-units” which are units that are 275 to 325 square feet in size.
“Even if you use $4.00, a square foot for instance, on a 300 square foot unit, you can typically rent that unit for about 1100 or $1200 a month and everything works.”
As a caveat though, Bouchard adds that the only way for that to work would mean increasing the number of these units in a building, which comes with its own challenges.
That challenge comes in the form of parking for the units, which is why TDI is asking for a parking variance from the city of Duncan, which would allow them to build more units than parking spaces.
Bouchard is optimistic that the public and the city of Duncan support the development, and you can give your own opinion on the Top Down Investments website.
