A Halifax real estate investor who has bought the Bank of New Brunswick building on Prince William Street says he would encourage other outside investors to invest in Saint John.
The move is a 180 from around four years ago when Ron Lovett was viewing properties in Saint John and said at the time he would never invest.
“I just couldn’t get my head wrapped around it, I just was shocked at how beautiful the city was but the amount of vacancies and boarded up buildings. It was shocking,” Lovett tells CHSJ News. “I just said, look, there’s no way I would ever invest.”
That all changed however with a recent visit to the uptown, when he says Judith Mackin of Tuck Studio took him on quick impromptu tour of all the businesses that have opened up shop lately.
“Telling me the story [of] this group of local business owners that aren’t going to put up with lazy, dead Saint John and that wanted to make a difference. I was really inspired actually by that story…it really reminded of Gastown in Vancouver,” says Lovett.
Lovett says there’s a shift in Saint John of baby boomers and millennials coming to the uptown core which has changed the supply and demand mix.
“There is opportunity in the downtown core of Saint John for sure, so I look at that as opportunity, others look at that still with probably the same lens I had four years ago and say, jeez, it’s just not there yet, there’s not enough movement but sometimes then you’re a little too late,” says Lovett.
Lovett says he thinks that’s what people are experiencing in Halifax right now and if you didn’t pick up a piece of property there 8 years ago you missed the party.
When it comes to his plans for the building, he says it’s not set in stone yet but definitely open to a variety of options and they’ve been in talks with various tenants.
You can hear Laura Lyall’s interview with Ron Lovett on our weekly news magazine show, Pulse NB, which airs every Sunday after the 9am news and again at 9pm
