New Brunswick·NewA Saint John developer has partnered with a local company that does precast construction in a factory to build a 13-storey apartment building more quickly in a prime location in the city centre.13-storey building going up fast after decades of debate over the future of a prime uptown propertyMark Leger · CBC News · Posted: Nov 22, 2025 5:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 30 minutes agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Construction workers guide a section of the exterior into place on the 13-storey apartment building going up at the head of King Street in Saint John. (Mark Leger/CBC)For decades it was a popular department store, then it became a derelict building and after that, a giant hole in the ground.It’s been a long wait for Saint Johners keen to see this prime uptown property on King’s Square redeveloped.Now, a 13-storey apartment building with ground-floor commercial spaces is under construction. And it’s coming together quickly, floor by floor, with large pre-made sections manufactured off-site, trucked to the property on King Street, and hoisted into place by a large crane.It’s like Lego with heritage-style brick pieces.“I wanted it to fit in the immediate vicinity,” developer Percy Wilbur said. “We’re right next to the City Market, and I wanted to compliment it and make it feel like it belongs there and it’s been there for some time. So we went with an old Boston red stone brick with the sandstone window trims and ledges.”Developer Percy Wilbur says the new building will have nearly 150 apartments, a rooftop patio and businesses on the ground floor that could include a pharmacy and restaurant. (Graham Thompson/CBC)Wilbur is working with Saint John-based Strescon Limited, which is manufacturing pre-cast sections of the facade and interior and delivering them uptown by transport truck.He says it could speed up construction by six to eight months and cut building costs by as much as 10 per cent.“We thought about it long and hard, and after doing our research and working with Strescon, we determined it would be best to go with this precast setup,” Wilbur said. Rebecca Patterson, the district manager at Strescon, says this is a showcase project for Strescon, with 2,000 pre-cast components manufactured at their facility on the city’s east side (Graham Thompson/CBC)“It gives it a finished look as you’re erecting it. The windows are already in place. It’s almost weather-tight as you go up [floor by floor]. It was a big bonus for time and cost savings to go with that system.”It’s a form of construction that’s becoming more popular — manufacturing sections of a house or an apartment building in factories and assembling them on site.For Rebecca Patterson at Strescon, it’s like the old song, “everything old is new again.”As far back as the 1970s, the company constructed two east Saint John apartment buildings using pre-cast concrete, and she says the idea is even older than that, dating back to ancient Rome.“Precast concrete is not new at all,” said Patteron, Strescon’s district manager. “It’s innovative in many ways, but it’s a grounded process built in Europe, and if you think of things like the Pantheon and the Colosseum, that’s precast concrete.”“For Strescon, it’s not new either. Taking total precast into a modern environment in Saint John is something that we’re trying to bring back.”WATCH | Uptown project fits with federal push for modular construction:How Lego-like manufacturing is speeding up construction of a Saint John buildingA 13-storey apartment building with ground-floor commercial space is coming together quickly in Saint John. WATCH | Carney government’s p Patterson says this is a showcase project for the company, with 2,000 pre-cast components manufactured at their facility on the city’s east side, from the brick-and-concrete exterior panels to interior staircases.She says precast construction saves time, money and makes more efficient use of labour. There is also the opportunity for customized components like the architectural features that help the King Street building blend in with the surrounding area.“We know housing is a crisis,” Patterson said. “We know that the speed of installation is also something that can be leveraged.”“All of those are the things that we’re passionate about here, but we haven’t necessarily been able to showcase them to our hometown. And this is something that I think you’re able to very quickly see – the beauty of the heritage with the brick but also encompassing new innovations.”The building under construction was designed to blend in with the City Market and the University of New Brunswick building, which also face King’s Square. (Roger Cosman/CBC)The Carney government is pushing modular construction, another kind of off-site manufacturing, to meet nationwide demand for new housing.Brandon Searle, the director of innovation and operations of the Off-site Construction Research Centre at the University of New Brunswick, says the country needs to embrace all the forms of off-site construction to meet the federal government goal of doubling the amount of new housing constructed in Canada each year.“If you look at the real benefits of off-site construction, it’s speed,” Searle said. “It’s not going to be only volumetric modular, only mass timber, only panelized or only precast. It’s all of the above.”When it’s completed, the King Street building will have nearly 150 apartment units, a fitness facility, a rooftop patio and ground floor businesses that could include a restaurant, grocery store or pharmacy.Wilbur bought the property five years ago but faced delays over the years because of issues like supply-chain shortages, he said. As recently as 2023, he said he couldn’t yet commit to a timeline for construction, and so the site remained a construction site and eyesore until work began in earnest earlier this fall.It’s taken awhile to find the right development for the valued but long neglected property in the city centre, but Wilbur says he found the right way forward starting from scratch.“It’s a pretty key location, right here on King’s Square,” Wilbur said. “It’s a revitalization [project] for the downtown core. [The former Woolworth’s building] was pretty horrible to begin with and there were many different owners and ideas, and none of them took off. I think they all tried to save what was there rather than building something new.”Wilbur saidi people should be moving into the building by this time next year. He said rents will range from $1,300 for one-bedroom units and $1,400 to $3,000 for two-bedroom units on the upper floors.Wilbur expects the residents to be mostly young professionals, “empty nesters” and newcomers to the city.ABOUT THE AUTHORMark Leger is a reporter and producer based in Saint John. Send him story ideas to: mark.leger@cbc.ca
Saint John building comes together like Lego with heritage-style brick pieces
