City Announces Bold New Affordable Housing Initiative

Stepping up to the challenge of Saint Catharines’ affordable housing crisis, the city has announced a novel concept for those on limited incomes. A brand new development, to be named The Sheik’s Tent Residences, will be located along the beautiful banks of the Second Welland Canal in what is now Centennial Park. Information released by the city said that they are expecting to install 100 luxury tents on exclusive plots strategically placed along the canal for easy access for bathing, drinking and dumping sewage directly into the creek.

Promotional material for the planned development provides more information on this bold plan:

This is a rare opportunity for families to get in on the ground floor of this exciting new concept! Opening directly onto the canal, a tent in the Sheik’s Tent Residences will offer the discerning purchaser a combination of refined living with a one-of-a-kind water setting. The tents will be located in a lavish park setting with gardens and, at some later date, a totem pole in the shared front yard. Each tent will have a grand port cochere that opens into a single, spacious 10 x 10 open-concept room with soaring ceilings and breathtaking panoramas of the surrounding hundred-year-old willows and the historic canal. Firmly attached to luxurious hardwood platforms, the units should survive even the most ferocious winter storms.

Deluxe Coleman propane four-burner stoves will be provided for each tent along with wine racks and an icebox that uses genuine ice. Entirely pet friendly, the Sheik’s Tent Residences will also be eco-friendly, one of the greenest housing projects ever constructed in Niagara. Without electricity, heat or air conditioning, the entire 100-unit community will be carbon neutral.

A unique feature of the development is the one-of-a-kind spacious fire pits that have been meticulously detailed and designed to provide a magnificent cooking and hospitality focus for each tent. Besides providing the perfect ambience for entertaining, these pits are also great on weeknights when the whole family can sit around the fire and roast hotdogs. And how cozy on those snowy, Christmas-card January mornings!

Because we know residents will be busy enjoying the surrounding wineries, museums and boating lifestyle, a City concierge will deliver firewood to each tent once a week. Bike and shopping cart racks will be attached to each tent.

Despite the bike racks, because the development will not exceed the $50 million minimum investment and also lacks a mixed-use component as well as sufficient tax generation, the project will not be eligible for a CIP grant.