The Leader Building, 1853 Hamilton
Built in 1911 as the original home of the Leader Post, the Leader Building was designated a Municipal Heritage Property in 1987. In 2004, Nicor Property Management (Ross Keith) purchased the building. Harvard Developments acquired shares in the property in 2005.
The original plan to develop condo units in this building is now the plan that is being built. In that plan, the top five floors become condo units, with prices starting as low as $217,350. Less than one third of the main floor would be retail space, with the remaining two thirds and the entire basement dedicated to parking.
The ArtsAction Feasibility Study identified a second option for this building that required an influx of government subsidy for construction costs, through SaskHousing and other agencies. The ArtsAction proposal included the creation of three floors of artist live/work space (to be subsidized by SaskHousing), two floors of office space (with arts organizations on one floor and an artist business centre and classroom space on the other floor), a main floor restaurant and grocery store, and basement recording studios and rehearsal rooms. Unfortunately, SaskHousing’s priorities are to provide support for housing for seniors, people with disabilities and families. They do not have programs to support housing for singles, so the top three floors would have to be renovated without subsidy. (In fact, 18 months after submitting a proposal for housing support to SaskHousing, Inner Circle Management and Nicor had yet to receive an official written response to that application.)
The building owners (Nicor and Harvard) had a federal grant of over $700,000 that required the bulk of the building renovations to be completed before the summer of 2009. To satisfy the terms of that grant, the building owners proceeded to develop the building, and it is now the home of NWL Design on the main floor, Solvera Solutions on the second floor, and condos on the 4th, 5th and 6th floor.
Since December 2008, Inner Circle has been working on obtaining the funding for an arts business centre on the third floor of the Leader Building. A detailed business plan was written and delivered to potential funding partners in July 2009. We continue to hold out hope that a centre for creative entrepreneurs will be housed in the Leader Building.
We will keep this page updated as things change!