Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

From New Dream Homes and Condos Magazine

At Alterra, it’s all about creating exceptional living spaces and that’s just what they’ve done at Network Lofts.

Once an office for Bell Canada, the Network Lofts building at Bloor and Islington has been retrofitted, refurnished, and reborn. With direct connections to the city’s financial and entertainment districts, Network Lofts offers residents stylish living spaces in Toronto’s west end.

This landmark building will be refaced with a shimmering new glass and stucco exterior. Step inside and enjoy real loft living with polished concrete floors, exposed concrete columns, and ceilings ranging from 10 1/2 to 19 1/2 feet. Panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows provide spectacular views of the city and the lake.

Your transition from the outside world to the luxury within Network Lofts is made through an elegant covered entrance, past a front porch and vestibule, and into a refined boutique-style lobby. Here, a 24-hour concierge greets you and your guests, welcoming you into a sophisticated reception area with wood-paneled walls and stone and steel accents.

The lofts feature individually controlled in-suite heating and cooling system, French balconies with sliding doors (as per plan), and track lighting in entrance foyer and kitchen area. Each suite includes a security system and telephone intercom entry system for receiving guests.

The kitchens at Network Lofts are a gourmet’s dream with their custom “Eurostyle” cabinetry, double stainless steel sink with upgraded washerless single lever extended lever handle faucet, and four appliances.

The trendy Network Lofts bathrooms include porcelain or ceramic tile floors and porcelain or ceramic tile shower surrounds with ceramic tile floor finish. They also feature “Eurostyle” design finish cabinets with cultured marble countertops and integrated sinks with upgraded single lever faucets.

Ready to pamper you in both body and mind, Network Lofts‘ recreational amenities offer a relaxing sanctuary after a hard day at the office or during a weekend entertaining guests from out of town.

Amenities include a relaxing whirlpool spa, men’s and women’s steam rooms, lockers, and change rooms.

The fully equipped exercise room includes treadmills, elliptical exercisers, free weights, and a flat screen television. Other amenities include a party room with kitchen, a media lounge with home theatre system, a yoga studio, and fully finished guest suite.

Network Lofts suites range in size from 740 to 1761 square feet, with prices starting at $247,990.

Trusted by homebuyers for over 30 years, Alterra’s success is built upon a commitment to homebuyers that goes above and beyond the industry standards. With more than 400,000 homes and condos to their credit, Alterra has established a well-deserved reputation for creating legendary communities.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information

From New Dream Homes and Condos Magazine

Originally part of a 100-acre park lot granted to Captain John Denison in 1815, Kensington Market developed into a middle class Anglo-Saxon neighbourhood with distinctive British street names like Kensington Avenue, Fitzroy Terrace, Oxford Street, and Wales Avenue.

The neighbourhood began to change in the early 1900s when Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe started to settle there. Excluded from the Toronto business community, Kensington Market’s Jewish families opened stalls in front of their houses, and sold goods to each other. This Jewish market was the start of an old world marketplace in the heart of the Kensington neighbourhood.

Today the area represents the true meaning of the word eclectic, with people from more than 30 cultural backgrounds, including Portuguese, East Indian, Ethiopian, and Caribbean.

Defined by its popular outdoor market, Kensington Market has become a hot spot for tourists and a popular Toronto shopping destination.

The Kensington Market is the city’s only year-round outdoor market. It is a place of organized confusion; where merchants sell their goods right out on the sidewalks and restaurant radios trumpet the words and music of a far-off land. It is a haven of fresh fruit, vegetables, and dry goods stores. Some of the best local produce and meat shops are found on these cramped little streets, and the seafood, dry goods, and dollar stores on Spadina are just a few blocks away. Kensington Avenue itself also houses several cafes and some of the best vintage clothing stores in the city.

The shopping on the periphery of the Kensington Market neighbourhood includes Chinatown on Spadina Avenue, Portugal Village on Dundas Street West, and the trendy shops and restaurants along Queen Street West.

The local park and meeting place for Kensington Market residents is Bellevue Square, which is located right in the centre of the neighbourhood and has a children’s playground and a wading pool.

Cecil Community Centre at Spadina and College features a large hall that is used for theatre productions, sports, parties, and weddings.

The Shaw College Public Library serves as a meeting place and offers reading material in a number of languages that reflect the cultural diversity of Kensington Market residents.

Streetcar service on Bathurst Street connects passengers to the Bloor-Danforth subway line. The Spadina, Dundas, and Queen streetcars travel to the Spadina station on the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line. Motorists are already downtown and are just minutes from the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard.

Many of the Kensington Market area’s Victorian row houses, built between the 1870s and 90s, are small to moderate in size and feature decorative accents. The houses in the heart of the Kensington Market have market stalls on their front lawns and many are oriented to the rear of the property where small laneways offer privacy from the hustle and bustle of the marketplace.

The Kensington Market neighbourhood is presently being revitalized by a handful of new housing projects. These new developments include Victorian inspired townhomes that are situated on Oxford Street and the Kensington Market Lofts, a unique condominium project situated in three former George Brown College buildings on Baldwin and Nassau Streets.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information

By Laryssa Stolarskyj - New Dream Homes and Condos Magazine

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) conducted a tour of alternative housing projects around Toronto. Covering the gamut from “social housing to affordable home ownership to energy efficient and environmentally friendly technologies,” the tour uncovered innovative options that serve as inspiration for housing trends today and for the future.

Mill Street Cooperative

Not-for-profit Options for Homes converted a Distillery District warehouse into affordable cooperative housing for low- to middle-income households. Options is hired as a consultant to owners—it has the development expertise to look after purchasers who want quality at the best price possible and aren’t interested in a heavy amenity package.

As a result, buyers save through the lack of developer’s costs. Founder and president Mike Labbe says what makes it unique is the “initial affordability and sense of community that comes out of the sense of being owner occupied.” Options introduces homes at lower price level, creating more opportunities for tenants to get out of renting for up to $20,000 a year less than a standard condo—about $100 less per square foot on average. This translates to 3,000 to 4,000 new units per year that otherwise wouldn’t have been produced.

“The model is an opportunity to get people to build their own homes, and that’s what’s producing community and affordability,” says Labbe. By bringing people into home ownership, it “ultimately helps the industry and the economy because they can move up.” Options offers a simple product for an attractive price where owners get involved in the process of creating their own homes and can get to know their neighbours before moving in.

Options’ niche market is 70% first-time purchasers who are “high-down payment, moderate-income people who can’t get into the market otherwise and end up being stable purchasers.”

Options hopes to open a project every year. Its next site is a two-phase, 600-unit project at Keele and Dundas, where immediate residents are already buying in. Visit www.optionsforhomes.ca to learn more.

Regent Park

The Regent Park revitalization is underway. Built 50 years ago, Regent Park is Canada’s oldest publicly funded housing community. But the weakening buildings and poorly planned public spaces challenged its safety, and the area was due for a redesign.

The goal of the revitalization is to turn “an aging, deteriorating assembly of buildings, which house approximately 6,500 low-income singles and families, into a new vibrant mixed-income and mixed-tenure community in the heart of downtown,” says Mark Guslits of Toronto Community Housing.

Residents have temporarily relocated for the decade-plus-long project, but they will return to a thriving community with shops and parks instead of the no-thru-traffic island that sits there now.

The new Regent Park will also be sustainable for the future: “All new buildings will be built to a LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] gold standard and exhibit features that will save energy costs and make the community truly sustainable. A district energy plant will be built under the first building, which will supply heat, cooling, and power to the community.”

How will the new neighbourhood ultimately impact the city? “It will, we believe, change the face of downtown east,” Guslits concludes. “There will soon be a neighbourhood with streets, shops, lanes, townhomes, houses for rent and to own. Regent Park will become part of the urban fabric of Toronto. It will clearly lead to the entire east side changing, growing, and evolving over the next 15 years.” Visit www.regentpark.ca to learn more.

Arcadia Housing Co-op

Since 1986, Arcadia has provided affordable housing for artists and their families near the lakefront.

It’s a non-profit co-operative whose mandate is to establish a permanent arts community in Toronto with a supportive base and appropriate work spaces.

Arcadia is built on a land trust, and that land can only be used for co-operative housing. The members don’t have equity in their units; rather, they pay monthly housing charges based on the annual budget. Members can pay based on their income thanks to CMHC’s housing charge assistance. Arcadia also funds its own subsidy pool through its operating budget, which members pay into.

Among its environmental features is the volunteer-run roof garden, a project several years in the making. Designed by architect Monica Kuhn, the first garden was planted in 1998 and six others have been added since, including an herb garden.

Many of the plants are native species and attract various butterflies, insects, and birds. Rebecca Quigley, manager of Arcadia, points out that the sustainability features don’t stop with the garden. “We have also added solar panels to heat our water, replaced all our toilets, shower heads, and faucets to conserve water, and replaced our hallway lighting to reduce our energy usage.” Residents also contribute their efforts to sustaining their community: “Members have volunteered their expertise and labour to produce the green roof, a workshop, art gallery, theatre, darkroom, and music rehearsal room in our common spaces.”