Developer hopeful 1,700-unit ‘Centra’ project gets zoning green light from Oshawa

The company behind the redevelopment of the Oshawa Clinic property downtown is hopeful final zoning will happen before year-end, with Atria Developments hoping the item can be included on the December 2 Economic and Development Committee Services committee agenda.

Atria, which has a long history in Oshawa, currently has a half-dozen projects on the go in the city, including four signature projects downtown.

The project at the former Oshawa Clinic – dubbed Centra – is the biggest, with as many as 1,700 units planned on a series of high-rise towers rising as high as 35 storeys immediately north of the Tribute Communities Centre.

Atria President Hans Jain purchased the King Street East property from a consortium of doctors, with most of the medical team already moved into the brand-new Whitby Health Centre, a 154,000 square foot facility on Des Newman Boulevard staffed by 57 doctors and offering walk-in, urgent care, diagnostic imaging and laboratory services.

Jain and his company plan to preserve as much of the ivy-walled, 76-year-old main building as possible while incorporating it into the rest of the project, which will eventually include three towers from 29-35 storeys, a fourth 16-storey building and a retail podium with shops and a “large professional medical centre.”

Jain said he will work with the City to keep a medical “presence” at the site. “It’s very important to us that the Clinic still has a place in downtown Oshawa.”

The Toronto-based developer has been “on a mission to illuminate urban neighbourhoods” for the past quarter-century and Jain has been coming to the Motor City to work since the shovels hit the ground at Parkwood Residences on the other side of downtown more than 20 years ago.

Parkwood, a former office building that was being offered in a tax sale, became the company’s first project in Oshawa and the first condo development in the downtown in decades when it welcomed its first of 120 residents in 2007.

The ivy-walled Oshawa Clinic building