Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

Corktown was originally settled by working class immigrants in the early 1800’s. Many of these families came from the County of Cork in Ireland, which explains how this neighbourhood became known as Corktown.

Most Corktown residents found employment at one of the local breweries or brickyards. These families were very poor and could not afford the lofty pew rents at nearby St. James Cathedral. This led to the building of their own “Little Trinity Church” in 1843. Little Trinity Church is still standing today at 417 King Street East.

The Trinity Schoolhouse on Trinity Street, just south of Little Trinity Church was built in 1848. This was Toronto’s first ‘free school’. Its benefactor was Enoch Turner, a prominent Corktown brewer, and one of Toronto’s great philanthropists.

A century and a half later children and adults are still being educated in the Trinity Schoolhouse, which is now run as a museum designed to replicate a mid-nineteenth century classroom.

Corktown is one of the more affordable downtown Toronto neighbourhoods. It has recently become popular with young professionals, who find this location extremely convenient to Toronto’s downtown business and entertainment districts.

New and more relaxed zoning bylaws in the Corktown district have resulted in the speedy conversion of many of Corktown’s commercial buildings into live/work studios, lofts and professional offices, all of which has helped to revitalize the entire neighbourhood.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

16 Croft Street

By Janna Levitt

Originally, Croft Street was a significant north/south thoroughfare connecting Bloor Street to College. As the area around it became more developed, it took on many of the functions typical of Toronto lanes, such as the provision of garages and vehicular access to the houses flanking Croft east and west; however, a number of houses, coach houses, and warehouses remain that reflect the street’s previous primacy.

No. 16 Croft Street is part of a larger building that was converted into five freehold lofts. Prior to the renovation, it housed a Turkish rug cleaning business that had been in operation since the 1920s. Before that, the building was a munitions factory during the First World War. A group of people (all the end users), purchased the warehouse in 1987 with the intention of converting it to live/work lofts.

The existing building had 10,000 square feet of open space on two floors, with windows on all four sides. The masonry walls are a mix of clay brick on the two exterior wythes and concrete brick on the third, interior course. The structural system is a combination of timber and steel beams, and mill-flooring decking throughout. There is no at-grade outside space on the property, as the property lines mirror the floor plate of the building.

The proposed loft conversion from existing non-conforming use to residential was turned down at the Committee of Adjustment in the fall of 1987. It was appealed and approved at the Ontario Municipal Board in the spring of 1988.

The building was divided vertically to create five equal size loft spaces, each with a total area of about 2,000 square feet. Three large arches were cut out of the front masonry wall on Croft Street and five parking spots were carved into the previously interior ground floor area. The newly created exterior space also provided a recessed entry area and storage facilities for each house.

The square footage removed from the ground floor to provide access and parking was “relocated” as a continuous strip along the mid-third of the existing roof. The new party walls defining each loft were continued up through this volume, making a new third-floor room flanked on either side by decks. The siting and massing of the third-floor volume was designed to minimize the impact on the neighbouring houses, both in respect to privacy and shadows.

The ground floor of the Croft Street Lofts was designed to work as an independent office or apartment, with its own entrance. A double-height space at the back half of the space was created to allow for a small sleeping loft above the washroom/laundry/storage area. In addition, there is a large foyer and stair, separated from the ground-floor apartment, that serves as the entrance to the second unit above.

The second floor is organized into two distinct areas defined by the placement of stairs and other “objects” that create various degrees of enclosure. Changes in the floor levels/ceiling heights mark the transition between the two areas. The public precinct accommodates the dining room, living room, kitchen, and small sitting area, and has 14-foot ceilings.

The private zone is up three steps and contains the bathroom and two bedrooms. The ceilings in this area are eight feet high, with the windows set low to the floor. A staircase leading up to the third floor defines the edge of the double-height volume of the kitchen, and provides a visual anchor separating the floor space into smaller areas. The orientation of this space, relative to the glazing, insures that the middle section of the floor plate receives natural light all day long.

The stairs up terminate at a bridge-like element straddling the double-height volume that begins in the kitchen and ends in the dining room. This space was created using the remaining walls of the old elevator shaft. From one side of the bridge, there is a spectacular view towards downtown Toronto. From the other, one overlooks the kitchen and bedrooms beyond. One step up from the “bridge” is the finished third-floor family room.

The east/west walls of the third floor are made up of oversized sliding doors that lead out to a deck on either side. The vaulted form of the roof is echoed in the profile of the ceiling. At either end, it drops down to meet a lower, orthogonal bulkhead. These mark the threshold between outside and in. The character of the two exterior spaces was developed to exploit their different orientations. The east deck is more intimate and is finished with uncalibrated slate and built-in planters. The west side is cedar-clad and contains the barbecue and a large seating area.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

By Jane Gadd - Globe and Mail

A bid to launch a creative new style of downtown loft by converting a laneway commercial building into two “town lofts” became a harsh primer in the bureaucratic process for two young sons in a Toronto development dynasty.

The costly tribulations of Jordan Mecklinger, 25, and his brother Shawn, 27, show just how hard it is to build housing anywhere in Toronto’s 311 kilometres of back lanes, despite the city’s commitment to increasing density in the core and to considering such projects on a case-by-case basis.

Jordan and Shawn, recent graduates in urban development and real estate finance, respectively, and the fourth generation in a family of builders, thought they’d come up with a no-brainer to brand their new company, Kilbarry Hill Corp., as a hip, young downtown developer.

They had purchased a building on Croft Street, tucked behind the shabby cafes and variety stores of Bathurst and College streets, right next door to a pioneer laneway loft conversion (the Croft Lofts) that had set a precedent when the Ontario Municipal Board approved it in the eighties.

The Mecklingers’ building, though zoned residential, was being used as a commercial photography studio. To turn it into housing would restore it to its correct legal use.

Furthermore, city planners had specifically mentioned Croft Street as the type of lane that is suitable for the odd, innovative little laneway homes that have been pet projects of a number of architects in the past 20 years. It was classified as a street, had water, sewage and power hookups and a number of commercial structures.

But their plans to transform the big square commercial building into two 2,100-square-foot residences with three open-plan levels and exposed beams and ducts quickly ran into trouble. They needed zoning variances because the present building filled the whole lot, and that meant notices were sent out to the neighbourhood, including the homeowners on to whose yards the property backed.

They got unlucky. Some of the neighbours hated the idea and one happened to work for the city. A massive neighbourhood mobilization ensued, and the Mecklingers found themselves facing a crowd of hostile faces at two public meetings called to discuss the plan.

At the second one, they were shouted down and hustled out of the public hall.

“We had introduced ourselves, said ‘Hi, we’re gonna be in the neighbourhood,’ and there were 20 or 30 people there all shouting,” Shawn says. “We weren’t building 150 townhomes or a high-rise condo, yet there was this huge mobilization and email campaign.”

After purchasing the property a year ago and closing the deal in February, they’d hoped to be starting the construction work last April.

Their uncle, Jerry Mamid, wanted to move into one of the units and had agreed to sell his family’s Forest Hill home to Shawn.

“The city ground us,” says Mr. Mamid, a former lawyer, teacher and garment factory owner who is “acquisitions director” for Kilbarry Hill.

When the variance issue went to the committee of adjustment, the plans were rejected.

The Mecklingers didn’t want to throw in the towel, and prepared an appeal to the OMB. It scheduled a meeting for August. The afternoon before the meeting, the family’s lawyer got a call from city solicitors asking for a compromise that would push the massing of the building away from backyards and onto the lane.

Mr. Mamid called on his father-in-law, 75-year-old architect Peter Darling, to do an 11th-hour overhaul of the plan, and the funky H-shaped original with its cut-in courtyards at front and back, and open space on the lane, was gone.

“It would have been beautiful,” Jordan sighs. “We wanted it to be like a wedding-cake step-up to the second and third levels. It would have been more aesthetically pleasing.”

Mr. Darling drew the redesign by hand, Mr. Mamid recalls.

“Faxes flew back and forth that afternoon and the next morning between lawyers’ offices.” When they got to the OMB hearing they had made a deal, which the OMB approved.

But still no building permit came.

After spending more than $700,000 on the property and $100,000 to get it through the approvals process, they still don’t have a permit in hand - though the city has said it will come in two weeks and has given them the go-ahead to proceed with digging up the floors and excavating soil for new footings.

Jordan and Shawn’s father, Alan Mecklinger, a developer and landlord of industrial and commercial plazas throughout the city, expresses bitterness.

“NDPers [at the city] are just picking our pockets,” he says. “A simple project is turned into a very, very costly chain of events orchestrated by the bureaucracy. … Everyone is a loser in the end.”

Then he switches from experienced businessman to fond father.

“I really saw it as a great opportunity for the boys to put themselves on the map with something creative in the central core, and it turned into a very miserable experience,” he says sadly.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960