Ken Soble Tower Transformation

In response to municipal needs for affordable housing, CityHousing Hamilton Corporation (CHHC) will create North America’s first Passive House (PH) retrofit of a 50 year old apartment building. The project will qualify as one of ten multi-residential retrofits registered with International PH Certification in the world, and ties in strongly with the City’s West Harbour redevelopment plans of design excellence and sustainable building practices. The Passive House standard includes ultra-low energy buildings that eliminate dependence on fossil fuels for heating and cooling through high performance envelopes and relatively low tech applications. The project will reach low-energy performance by such measures as recladding the building, adding fixed internal shading, reducing plug loads with a shared Community Cooling Room, and installing tank-less instant hot water heaters in each suite, thus eliminating centralized systems and reducing heat loss through piping. The end result will be a 146-unit affordable housing building that will cater to young families and the elderly, and which will be centrally located within new waterfront development properties. The initiative was spearheaded by a strong 2015-2016 community engagement and awareness campaign, where CHHC reached out to residents in order to gauge interest in the building’s rehabilitation. The response rate of the initiative was 83%, and the results indicated a strong support for the initiative. The retrofit of the tower will meet EnerPHit Certification, a branch of the PH standard designed specifically for building retrofits. This retrofit will provide residents with improved comfort, health, and control of their indoor environments, while radically reducing the environmental footprint of the building. This creates significant cost efficiencies and will reduce energy intensity by at least 70% and greenhouse gas emissions by over 90%. With over 6,000 households on the City of Hamilton’s community housing waitlist, the rehabilitation of this 146-unit building is critical to providing safe, high-quality housing for those most in need. This project will help fill the housing gap for low-income seniors through design informed by accessibility and aging-in-place principles and will support these residents, and the neighbourhood, through new community spaces and partnerships with social service agencies. It will also position the Ken Soble Tower as a landmark initiative, kick-starting a new era of affordable housing stewardship in Hamilton and beyond. The building’s energy consumption will be measured and monitored over two years post-construction in order to track the success of the retrofit. Following rehabilitation, the Ken Soble Tower will be a model for housing quality and energy performance for thousands of postwar apartment towers across the country. (Project description from original funding application)