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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After more than 30 years of federal government tenancy, the Bellanca Building will soon be left completely empty as 260 Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada employees move into the new, five-storey Gallery Building.

The new Gallery Building, located on the corner of Franklin Avenue and 52 Street, is nearing completion. In March, 260 Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada employees will move from the Bellanca and Precambrian buildings into the new five-storey structure. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo

Construction of the new structure, located on the corner of Franklin Avenue and 52nd Street, is near completion, leaving some of the employees who will soon call the building home increasingly anxious about how they - currently taking up the entire ten storeys of Bellanca and one floor of the Precambrian building - will be fit into just four storeys of office space at the new building.

"This is a very long, wide building so the floor plays are a lot larger," said Darin Benoit, property manager for Dundee Real Estate Investment Trust subsidiary Bellanca Development Ltd. - pegging the floor plans at more than 10,000 square feet. "So they can fit more people in those areas."

Bellanca, standing at twice the height of the new Gallery Building, amounts to roughly the same square-footage as the new 50,000 square-foot structure Dundee owns all three buildings.

"A lot of people say 'How are you going to get 11 floors onto four?"' corporate services director Susan Craig said. "But it is because of the size of the floor plan.

"I have toured the space (and) it looks absolutely huge when you stand at one end of the building and look towards the other."

As the department's Bellanca lease approached expiration, the Department of Public Works and Government Services - which manages lease space - decided to put the contract to tender, adding the requirement that the building meet more environmentally - stringent LEED silver ratings, Craig said.

One of the proposals was to renovate Bellanca to bring the building up to that standard, but in 2009 the winning bid was to construct and move into a new building.

As a result, come March, the new Gallery Building will have 100 per cent occupancy, while Bellanca, which has been occupied by the federal government since it was built in 1973, will have zero occupancy, leaving the city's largest commercial landlord with 10 storeys of office space to fill.

"Currently, there's going to be 53,000 square feet of office space on the market as of March first," Benoit said. "We're aggressively trying to lease the building up."

After Bellanca is decommissioned by the government, new carpet and tiles will be placed for future tenants, Benoit said, which will preferably be larger tenants, such as government departments, quasi-government departments or mining companies.

Aboriginal Affairs has signed a 10-year lease for the new Gallery Building, and while the city has pushed for more commercial and residential development of the downtown areas, Mayor Gord Van Tighem said he is in support of Dundee and the government use of the $20-million Gallery Building development.

"You have to go where the market is," Van Tighem said, adding on the other hand, "having government there means if you have a commercial operation, you have customers."

The old Gallery Building, which once housed a popular bar and an actor's studio, among several previous uses, was demolished by Dundee in April 2010.

Construction of the new Gallery Building started later that year.

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