A developer has broken ground on a new $18-million apartment building in
downtown Summerside, P.E.I.

The five-storey Regent will contain 40 homes and 10,000 square feet of
commercial space, CBC reported. The City of Summerside is providing the land at a cost of $1 and covering the costs of demolishing obsolete buildings on thesite, according to CBC.

The project’s developer Paul Jenkins has done most of his work in
Charlottetown. But he opted to invest in Summerside this time due to encouragement from city staff and co-operation from council.

It took a while to determine the right design for the building in accordance with the downtown’s history.

“We kind of settled on one that was big enough to get the density you
need to make the project worthwhile from a development point of view, but also ties into the historic nature of the streetscape,” Jenkins told CBC.

The Regent draws its name from previous similarly named properties in the same location, starting with a cinema that opened in 1947.