A long-awaited Woolworth’s department-store redevelopment in Saint John, N.B., is quickly being turned into a multi-family rental asset, CBC reported.

Once a global retail mainstay, Woolworth went out of business in Canada in 1994 as its operations were sold to Walmart. Many other redevelopment projects have failed to come to fruition since the building was demolished.

The manufactured-housing project is located along King Street in King’s Square in the city’s uptown district. With precast concrete pieces trucked in and hoisted by crane, the project is rapidly coming together “floor-by-floor,” according to the report.

“It’s like Lego with heritage-style brick pieces,” wrote the CBC’s Mark Leger.

The future 13-storey apartment building will be underpinned by a ground-floor retail component.

“I wanted it to fit in the immediate vicinity,” Percy Wilbur, the project’s developer, told CBC. “We’re right next to the City Market, and I wanted to complement it and make it feel like it belongs there and it’s been there for some time. So, we went with an old Boston red stone brick with the sandstone window trims and ledges.”

Wilbur has partnered on the project with Saint John-based Strescon, which is manufacturing precast sections of the building’s exterior. He told CBC that the prefabricated pieces could reduce the construction timeline by six to eight months and cut building costs by up to 10%.

“We thought about it long and hard, and after doing our research and working with Strescon, we determined it would be best to go with this precast setup,” Wilbur told his interviewer.

Modular wood-framed components are now in vogue. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has pledged to fund more projects involving them after launching billions of dollars worth of new spending slated to roll out over the next five years. But Strescon has been deploying precast concrete in construction since the 1970s.

“Precast concrete is not new at all,” said Rebecca Patterson, Strescon’s district manager, told CBC. “It’s innovative in many ways, but it’s a grounded process built in Europe, and if you think of things like the Pantheon and the Colosseum, that’s precast concrete.”

“For Strescon, it’s not new, either. Taking total precast into a modern environment in Saint John is something that we’re trying to bring back.”

Strescon regards the development-store redevelopment as a showcase project, CBC reported.

“We know housing is a crisis,” Patterson told CBC. “We know that the speed of installation is also something that can be leveraged.

“All of those are the things that we’re passionate about here, but we haven’t necessarily been able to showcase them to our hometown. And this is something that I think you’re able to very quickly see – the beauty of the heritage with the brick but also encompassing new innovations.”

Upon completion, the project will include about 150 apartment units, a fitness facility and a rooftop patio. Retail outlets could include a restaurant, along with a supermarket and drugstore, according to CBC.

Pictured: Department-store redevelopment project in Saint John, N.B.

Rendering: City of Saint John