Twin tower condo project proposed for Oshawa harbour to transform city’s waterfront

Twin towers soaring as high as 35 storeys above Oshawa harbour that could revolutionize the city’s waterfront as early as next year were on the committee floor Monday, with Development Services members voting to send the ambitious project back to staff for further review.

The Nahid Harbour project, courtesy of North York-based Nahid Corp., is to build the towers – one 18-35 storeys with 720 condominium units and the other 16-30 storeys with 690 units – in phases, with the shovel in the ground for the first tower (if approved) happening next summer or fall.

The project would be built on the north side of Harbour Road, across the street from Ed Broadbent Waterfront Park and the Oshawa Marina.

Each building will contain commercial space on the ground floor (11,178 sq.ft. in total), as well as landscaping, playgrounds, water pools, a parkette and a central square.

The developers made a presentation to committee Monday, with Michael Testaguzza, a planner with the Biglieri Group, saying the project would kick-start prestige development at Oshawa’s lakefront, something that has been top-of-mind among City planners for decades.

“The idea is to turn Harbour Road into a people’s place.”

Wayne Long, an architect and a vice-president of development and planning with Nahid, was also on hand electronically and Long fielded plenty of questions from councillors about the scope of the project, the parking situation, previous experience, and servicing.

For the record, the scope is big; the proposal has 1,261 parking spots (about half the required number) that will all be below grade; the company is just five years old but the principals have many years experience building large-scale projects; and most of the servicing is already there – they are working with Durham Region on sanitary servicing.

The project will require zoning amendments for its heights and density and Nahid Corp. held an open house last September at the Jubilee Pavilion at nearby Lakeview Park to tell the public about their plans and subsequently received seven letters from area residents.

Four were against the project, with one writer concerned about overcrowding and a second also opposing the increased density as it would allow “hundreds” of people to “invade” the area. Another resident said the entire lakefront should be bought by the City and turned into parkland and a fourth citizen had a laundry list of why the project would be a bad idea, including contaminated soils, crowded walking trails and local beaches, a lack of grocery stores and schools and an “increased crime rate” by putting “upscale condos right in the middle of the poor area of Oshawa.”