108 apartments to open at The Oaks this summer
In July 2018, Indwell hosted a neighbourhood party, with the stables of the former Royal Oak Dairy as the band’s backdrop. Won’t it be great to do that again, just four years later? This time we’ll celebrate the complete transformation of the space into The Oaks. If you live on East Ave N between Robert and Barton, you’ve had front-row seats.
The modern brown, white and mustard yellow cladding of the north building, which will be called Heartwood Apartments, will be home to 52 people. From East Avenue you can see a raised private terrace that will be a common outdoor space shared by residents in this and the adjoining building to the south, The Dairy Lofts. Its brick exterior and detailing hearken to the former dairy building in that location; this 43-unit building also houses a parking garage.
Best seen looking north from Robert Street is the retrofitted historic stables building. The bricks are being cleaned, some of the windows have been lengthened to provide more light, and the original ramp is being incorporated into the design. This building’s name will be Ain-dah-ing (pronounced AH-da-ning), an Ojibwe word that means “home within our heart”. It’s the perfect description for this building, which will have 13 apartments on the second and third floors, as well as the new office of Sacajawea Non-Profit Housing, and a shared community space on the ground floor.
Built to the rigorous Passive House standard, these buildings are highly energy efficient. You can still see evidence of the different layers of insulation in some areas. Triple-paned windows protect from the elements, but also keep apartments very quiet.
Construction crews are scheduled to complete their finishing touches as the first tenants begin moving in throughout the summer. Indwell hopes to host another neighbourhood party in September for tenants, neighbours, and supporters. Indwell will offer tours so you can see inside, and maybe even peek into an apartment or two. Stay tuned for details!
But that won’t quite be the end of the construction. The final phase will be a 30-unit building of town-house style apartments on corner of Robert and East. In early consultations, neighbours shared their hopes that there would be housing for families. As a result, this building will include one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.
As with other Indwell buildings (did you know that Indwell operates nine other buildings in Hamilton?), the housing at The Oaks will include supports. That means tenants will have trained staff available during the week to create a sense of community in each building, undertake landlord duties, help tenants connect to resources in the community and assist with problem solving, as well as access to 24/7 on-call support for urgent after hours matters.
Indwell staff would love to meet neighbours at the Barton Street Festival on June 4 – they’ll have a table there again this year until about 4 pm. Please visit!
Teresa Howe
Community Engagement Manager
thowe@indwell.ca
