You guys would be surprised just how many of these buildings already do have apartments, lofts and offices above them. My building has a fairly nondescript storefront and is hiding seven loft units above the first floor. After a few months of walking around downtown at night and looking at the windows above stores, I'd say at least a third of the buildings have apartments above. Not nearly as many as there could be, but also nothing to sneeze at. Definitely agree that our heritage buildings are underutilized, though. And not just in a residential sense.

Here's a picture I took of a building a few doors down from me:

http://i.imgur.com/Dl0Sg.jpg

Unfortunately, it's obviously vacant now but I'm sure you guys can see the potential here. Can you guys imagine the possibilities? Like going to class in a space such as this. Hopefully these are types of buildings Fanshawe ends up purchasing. The pretty amazing part is this building isn't really that unique among other properties along Dundas.

Fanshawe College wants to open a School for Applied and Performance Arts downtown, proposing that they restore and renovate existing buildings in downtown London. The city just granted them 20 million dollars. A loft building would probably be really awesome for rehearsal spaces.

Some of those buildings would make FANTASTIC lofts. Where are the developers???

many of them around have apartments back into them