APM looks to set up on capital waterfront

By: Dave Stewart

Proposed head office to be discussed at public meeting

Charlottetown – APM has a proposal before the City of Charlottetown to construct a five storey office building across the street from the corner of Hillsborough and Water Streets.
The building, which would be located next to the Visitor Information Center on Water Street, would cover 45,600 square feet.

The proposal requires a public meeting because APM has applied to amend the future land use map of the official plan from concept planning area to commercial and to have land rezoned to downtown mixed use (DMU) from comprehensive development area (CDA).
APM’s application will be among the items up for discussion at a public meeting Wednesday, Nov 2, at 7p.m. in council chambers at city hall.

Tim Banks, President of APM Group, said Wednesday they are working with the harbour authority to develop the parcel of land.
“Were giving serious consideration to relocating our head office to that site”, Banks said. “There are some minor issues that will have to be worked out.”

APM’s head office is currently located in the Southport Home Hardware building in Stratford.
Banks said while APM does have another option, should the application not be successful, it’s first choice is the waterfront lot in Charlottetown and he isn’t about to play lone location off another one.

Detailed renderings of the proposal are available at the planning department at City Hall.
The proposed building is described as having a stone finish on the main level and a combination of glass and energy efficient siding on the upper levels. APM is looking at things like in floor heating and a heat-pump recovery system from groundwater.

“The design idea behind it was we had to have some scale to the building so we kept it as narrow as we could on the Water Street side so that the view planes would not be directly affected. Normally you would do that building in more of a box or rectangular (shape).”
The building will be about 60 feet high.

“It’s (comparable) to the Atlantic Technology Center, about half the size of the new tech center. It’s the kind of modern design that you see going up in a lot of other cities.”

There will enough parking for about 140 vehicles.