Sina recently broke ground on a pair of six-storey rental apartment complexes at 788 March Rd. near Klondike Road in what the company hopes will be the first of many commercial and residential developments it will undertake in the National Capital Region.
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A Montreal developer making its first foray into the Ontario market is spending $100 million on a new multi-residential project in Kanata.
Sina recently broke ground on a pair of six-storey rental apartment complexes at 788 March Rd. near Klondike Road in what the company hopes will be the first of many commercial and residential developments it will undertake in the National Capital Region.
“We’re very bullish on Ottawa,” Sina partner Mahmoud El-Koury told OBJ in an interview this week before Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony at the new Kanata development, dubbed Eden. “It’s not a one-off for us. We want to be there to stay.”
El-Koury said Sina picked Kanata for its first project outside of the Montreal area because it believes the neighbourhood surrounding the Kanata North tech park, which is home to more than 500 companies that collectively employ more than 30,000 workers, is a “very underserved” rental market for people looking to live close to the office.
“We see a lot of office space that’s being underused and kind of empty (in other cities),” El-Koury explained. “But when we drove out there … we saw these office buildings were actually full and being used. It attracts a certain clientele, whether it’s young professionals or professionals with experience.”
Slated for occupancy in the fourth quarter of 2026, the complex will contain a total of 196 rental suites. The two buildings, which total about 208,000 square feet, will include 95 one-bedroom units, 79 two-bedroom apartments and 22 three-bedroom suites.
Residents of the buildings designed by Neuf architects will share amenities such as an indoor pool, gym and co-working spaces. The complex will also have indoor bicycle racks, a bicycle maintenance facility and two levels of underground car parking.
Sina is also building cycling and walking paths near the development that will be given back to the city. The company plans to hire a third-party property manager, but El-Koury said Sina will maintain a “hands-on” approach to ensure tenants’ needs are met.
Sina has a 75 per cent stake in the project, which is being financed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and Equitable Bank, while Montreal-based investment firm Remcorp owns the remainder.
While the Kanata project is Sina’s first multi-residential development, El-Koury stressed that it won’t be the last. Sina and Remcorp have teamed up to create a fund to finance more residential and commercial projects in Ontario and Quebec, and El-Koury said Sina is looking at other opportunities to expand its office, industrial and residential footprint in Ottawa.
“We like the market,” he said. “You see an uptick in construction in the area because it is needed.”
Indeed, housing starts have risen in the National Capital Region this year as interest rates have dropped and obtaining financing for major housing projects has become cheaper. But El-Koury said the industry is still grappling with how to make projects affordable for renters and financially viable for builders at the same time.
“We’re no longer in that COVID era where material prices were skyrocketing and it was a very uncertain time in terms of the hard costs,” he explained. “We’re trending in the right direction, I would say, but from a financing perspective there are definitely some challenges.”
Founded in 2019, Sina has built a number of industrial projects in the Montreal area in partnership with other developers, including a 325,000-square-foot facility in Pointe-Claire that is now a distribution centre for coffeemaker Nespresso. Its first major solo development was a 230,000-square-foot warehouse for metal processor CR Slitters in Valleyfield, southwest of Montreal.
El-Koury says the company has owners with extensive experience in designing and building a wide range of development projects and has a bright future in Quebec and beyond.
“We’re a very versatile group.”
