Built by people who believe in this city.
Turn Group and Arcadis: a developer with conviction and an architect with vision, united by a shared belief that great cities are built one exceptional project at a time.
Turn Group Ltd.
Turn Group was founded with a clear mandate: develop exceptional mixed-use communities that serve the cities they are built in. Led by CEO Ash Mahmoud, who spent 27 years working in Dubai's real estate market before moving to Canada in 2013, Turn Group brought a global perspective to Canadian development from day one.
Before founding Turn Group, Mahmoud spent seven years as president of Cairo Development Ltd., where he became a pioneer in Alberta's office-to-residential conversion market. He was involved in the first completed office conversion in Calgary in 2017 and has since delivered more than 11 conversions, transforming close to one million square feet of office space into residential communities across Calgary and Edmonton.
Vitalia Place at 299 Carling Avenue is Turn Group's most ambitious project to date, a $450 million, 600,000 square foot community representing one of the most significant mixed-use developments in Ottawa's recent history. It sits within a $1.5 billion pipeline that Turn Group has planned over the next five years, spanning projects in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, and British Columbia.
Turn Group operates out of offices in Ottawa and Calgary.
Ash Mahmoud, CEO
Ash Mahmoud founded Turn Group with a philosophy forged across three continents: that great development serves the community it lands in, not just the balance sheet behind it. His experience in Dubai and his years leading office conversion projects across Alberta gave him a rigorous, ground-up understanding of what makes mixed-use development work, and what makes it fall short.
At Vitalia Place, that experience is visible in every decision: the commitment to a full affordable housing building rather than a token percentage, the investment in a grocery store and medical hub before a single unit was leased, the choice to appoint Arcadis before the project even entered the approvals process. The ambition here is not to extract value from 299 Carling Avenue. It is to create it.
“This site was supposed to be developed a long time ago by different government entities and it never was. It just sat there. When we looked at it closely, we felt it was a great opportunity, not just for us, but for the neighbourhood.”
Ash Mahmoud, CEO, Turn Group
Arcadis
Arcadis is North America's largest multifamily architect, a global firm with deep expertise in designing mixed-use communities at every scale. Their appointment as lead architect for Vitalia Place reflects Turn Group's commitment to delivering a development that is architecturally distinguished, not merely adequate.
Arcadis's approach to Vitalia Place was rooted in the site's context: the organic shoreline of Dow's Lake, the earthy textures of the Canadian Shield, the agrarian history of the Experimental Farm to the south, and the cultural character of Little Italy to the east. The result is a design that is recognisably Ottawa, biophilic, warm, and grounded, while being unmistakably contemporary.
Their public realm design is equally considered: seven distinct zones wrapping the site, each with its own character, all designed to open the development to the city rather than to turn away from it. Arcadis is also engaged across Turn Group's broader $1.5 billion development pipeline.
“We want to connect to the park with our landscape so it becomes a holistic thing, not an inward-looking site.”
Jan Steingahs, Arcadis