Energy-efficient building in Summerside will be 1st of its kind in Atlantic region

Summerside will be home to Atlantic Canada's first certified passive energy designed industrial building.

The 16,000-square-foot building, located in the Summerside Business Commons Eco Park just north of Credit Union Place, will address a demand for research and manufacturing space on the Island.

Aaron Stavert, an architect with Open Practice Inc., said the facility will operate roughly about two-and-a-half times more efficiently than the current provincial standards.

"To put it in perspective, this facility will operate annually only on electricity. There's no carbon [or] fossil fuels being used in this facility," he said during a news conference in Summerside on Monday.

The project will cost about $7.6 million. The federal government is providing $2 million for the project through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, and the P.E.I. government is providing an additional $1 million.

The City of Summerside will finance the rest, with tenants covering the costs, said Mayor Dan Kutcher.

"We want to incubate and assist new businesses or start up businesses to grow in that space," he said. "This is really focused on the export market as well, so we want to make things and build things here in an environmentally sustainable way that can be exported and sent and sold elsewhere." 

The city hopes the incubator building will be only the first of many in the 5.6-hectare Eco Park. 

Though construction on the building won't be finished until next summer, half the spaces are already booked. With a commercial vacancy rate of less than one per cent, the city is confident it can easily fill the rest of the space.