Land development · Residential, commercial, light industrial · New Brunswick & Ontario
Mosaica acquires land — including sites written off as contaminated — and builds residential, commercial and light industrial in the mosaic a city or town needs. We focus on the “missing middle” rental housing market, at a rent working households and retirees can actually afford.
Homes approved
Rental homes delivered or under construction
Acres of impaired land remediated or in remediation
Records of Site Condition filed
How we read land
Most land is described by what it currently is: an office building and its adjacent parking lot, a gravel lot, a plaza. We see it for what it could become — its best use, its most sensible density, its ideal zoning, and the most fitting environmental rejuvenation.
That vision only matters if you can act on it. Remediation, rezoning and construction are usually carried out by three separate firms with three different views on how issues should be solved. For us, it's one conversation. That's why a parcel that doesn't pencil for a firm doing only one of the three can still pencil out for us — and why we're rarely limited to a single use on a piece of land. We are working in, and constantly seeking new opportunities in, New Brunswick and Ontario.
What we do
Plenty of firms will build on clean, rezoned land. The sites that stay empty are the ones that need all three of these capabilities at once.
We find under-used parcels near existing services, acquire them — including where it takes more than one owner to make a site work — and carry them through rezoning, site plan approval and servicing agreements. Sometimes we build on the result. Sometimes the right outcome is a clean, approved parcel in the hands of someone better placed to build it.
Duplexes through low-rise walk-ups, built to a standard that holds its value over a long hold. We own what we build, so durability is a financial decision, not a marketing one.
Former industrial, commercial and fuel-handling sites. We diligently oversee the environmental assessment, remedial action, and the regulatory filings that let a residential use go on the land.
In practice
A large parcel complicated by very difficult topography and a significant portion of conservation land — enough that other developers were reluctant to tackle it. We saw an opportunity to create serene living with gentle intensification.
The result is a development of 92 quality new homes, built for age-in-place living and surrounded by a beautiful canvas of conservation land and untouched farmers’ fields.
Official Plan and Zoning Approvals have been secured by our team.
The gap we build into
Most neighbourhoods offer two options: a detached house to buy, or a high-rise unit downtown. The building types in between were normal for a century, then nearly zoned out of existence.
These forms fit on ordinary lots, on streets that already have water, sewer and transit. They add homes without demanding a new subdivision at the edge of town — and at a scale a mid-market rent can support.
Brownfield remediation
A former garage, dry cleaner, foundry or fuel depot can sit vacant for decades because the environmental risk is unpriced. We price it, clear it, and put homes on it.
In practice
We found the site — a light industrial property — bought it and carried it through environmental remediation and planning approvals. We contributed to the road and municipal servicing infrastructure that made the land developable. Five acres were then severed and sold to Skyline, and the parcel is now Vale Apartments, a new rental community on Wolfe Street.
We didn't build those apartments. We made it possible to build them — the roads, the services, the clean soil and the approvals — which is the part of the work that has to happen first, and the part almost nobody wants to underwrite, as it carries significant risk and the outcome is never guaranteed.
Selected projects
In remediation
Three former petroleum properties totalling roughly 1.84 acres, acquired as a single portfolio. Our team is working through environmental remediation. All three are infill sites inside established neighbourhoods, walkable to the downtown core, on streets that already have services. A fuel-handling history is precisely what keeps land like this sitting idle for years. Intended end uses are residential and / or commercial.
A 12-unit concept for one of the three parcels, once remediation is complete. Street frontage above; below, parking held behind and beneath the building rather than in front of it.
Under construction · Saint John, New Brunswick
Forty stacked townhouses, purpose-built as rental. This is a viable solution to the missing middle.
Eighteen of the forty homes are rent-geared-to-income. Four are barrier-free to National Building Code standards. The balance are mid-market rentals. They sit in the same buildings, behind the same doors, finished the same way — which is the only arrangement that has ever worked.
Half the homes are volumetric modular, manufactured off-site by Iron Wood Homes. The other half are built conventionally on-site by our general contractor, Iron Maple Construction.
Running both methods on one site is deliberate. Modular buys speed and weather-proof scheduling; site-built keeps flexibility where the ground and the drawings demand it.
Upcoming projects
A former arena and soccer field in Saint John, envisioned as roughly 195 purpose-built rental homes across five phases. Gentle intensification: nothing taller than three storeys, on land the city had already stopped using. Figures below are estimates at concept stage.
The mix is envisioned as sixty one-bedroom homes and 135 two-bedrooms, with twenty-four of them — more than one unit in eight — barrier-free to both the National and New Brunswick building codes. Most purpose-built rental offers a token few, or none.
Mobility issues can arise, sometimes without warning. That is the worst time to plan a move, so we are being proactive. Units and grounds are envisioned so a resident who is active now can stay put if mobility becomes harder later — in the same home, or at least the same neighbourhood. It is independent living, planned so that staying is possible.
Roughly 80% of each home is intended to be manufactured off-site in New Brunswick using modern methods of construction, then completed by local trades. That buys predictability on cost, schedule and materials, and it cuts construction waste from around 30% on a conventional site build to somewhere between 1 and 5%.
The units are targeted to run an estimated 40–50% more efficiently than the 2020 National Building Code Tier 2 standard.
A neighbourhood is more than its buildings. It is the ‘in between’ areas where we interact and casually socialize with our neighbours. We are planning an accessible walking trail around the whole perimeter, a dog park, benches and picnic tables, deliberate widenings in the trail where people stop and talk, resident storage, and a porch or balcony for every single home.
Also in the pipeline
Gault Road, Saint John. A hundred and seven rental homes in a clearing, with woodland on every side. Serenity and peace in a natural setting.
A hundred of them are stacked townhouses — twenty-five three-storey blocks of four, the same form going up at Roxbury and planned at Belyea. The other seven are something we do not build often enough: single-storey, two- and three-bedroom bungalow terraces.
A bungalow terrace has no stairs between the front door and the bedroom. For a tenant who has been managing stairs for a decade and would rather not, that is not a feature, it is the whole decision. Putting a handful of them on the same site as the stacks means somebody can move within the neighbourhood instead of out of it.
The site sits inside standing woodland. Rather than strip it and start over, the layout holds the buildings in the middle and keeps the trees at the edges, so the perimeter of the site is the treeline rather than a fence line.
Why Mosaica
Each child got a colour, a floor, and a budget. What they built together was better than anything one of them would have created alone.
Mosaica started on a living room floor. I gave my children a project — design a mixed-use building out of Lego. Each of them took a colour and a floor, and before anyone was allowed to build, they had to count the blocks their floor would need and work out what it would cost to buy them. Then they put it together themselves.
The lesson stuck, because it's the same one that governs real buildings. The design follows from what the numbers will permit. Shops on the ground and homes above isn't a style, it's “live-and-work” brought together. And a good building is a set of separate pieces that agree to become one thing — which is what a mosaic is.
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