The walls are just going up in an apartment building at 65 Lady Ada Boulevard (off Mapleton Road) being developed by Quest Properties.

It’s about a year until the building will be finished but people have already spoken for a handful of apartments.

Quest Properties’ Thierry Comtois said 15 percent of the apartments at Vizion are already pre-leased and that he the multi-purpose apartment building to be finished by summer 2023.

“The market’s really, really good. We only launched a couple of weeks ago. I’m pretty sure when it opens it’s going to be filled,” said Comtois.

“The challenge is you can’t really promise these people when it’s going to open, so people still need to be fairly flexible,” he said.

Comtois said the building is seeing a steady stream of inquiries from potential renters, spanning a swath of ages. He guessed about 20 percent of the tire kickers for the apartments are from out of province.

“Some of them are young business professionals who don’t have a house yet, or don’t plan to have one for a couple of years,” he said.

Comtois said Quest and the contractors it’s working with suffered a slow winter last year, bogged down by a sequence of snowstorms.

“It’s hard to pour concrete during the Canadian winters here but this summer we made a lot of progress and we’re pretty happy about it,” he said.

The structure is now watertight and ready for a winter of work without delays, a little over a year after Quest broke ground.

“People are working inside the building, which means that things really shouldn’t slow down this winter,” Comtois said.

To bring Vizion to life, Quest is working with a variety of contractors including Avant Garde Construction and Management and Rice Contracting.

Vizion will entail a combination of one- and two-bedroom apartments, with an average unit size of just over 1,000 square feet. Rent will start in the range of $1,600 per month.

The building will also be home to a commercial space on the ground floor, with hospitality suites, an underground parking and storage, a community room, and a dentist’s office among its commercial tenants.

A potential draw for tenants is that Vizion will accept pets, something that’s often a rarity in newer developments.

“That’s a big thing. Through Covid, a lot of people got a small dog or a cat, and we want to be flexible on that side,” Comtois said.

“It makes sense for people to live there and enjoy it since they’re close to trails connecting them to Mapleton Park. We thought if there’s one location where we should accept pets, this is the one,” he added.

“We’re putting a lot of effort in creating communities rather than, you know, just building one building and leaving it at that.”

New Development

When the work is done on Vizion, Quest Properties has sights set on a larger, 20-phase, decade-long development in Dieppe, on Keith Road, near the Fox Creek Golf Club.

The development, which has yet to receive approval from Dieppe’s city council, will require Quest to consolidate several adjacent lots, to make one larger lot for the planning going forward.

“We don’t have any confirmation and approval from the city, but we’re working on plans and designs for the site there,” said Comtois.

It’s a large development of an integrated community, including smaller and higher-density apartments.”

Comtois was stingy with details when asked how many consolidations and lots the development would require. He said Quest is early in the process of creating the plan.

He told Huddle new infrastructure will be required to accommodate the new development, and that the apartments would be similar to the ones coming together on Lady Ava Boulevard.

“There’s lots of demand, so hopefully we can keep providing units for the market, knowing that lack of supply is a big issue right now.”

Sam Macdonald is a Moncton-based reporter for Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting partner. Send him your feedback and story ideas: macdonalds@huddle.today.