From New Homes & Con­dos Magazine

A century-old church evokes a sense of beauty and seren­ity, and with it, the recog­ni­tion of its pro­found his­toric value. When the oppor­tu­nity arose to trans­form an awe-inspiring church space into a res­i­den­tial build­ing, Archi­tect and Devel­oper Bernard Watt jumped at the chance.

In 1906, the Cen­ten­nial Methodist Church estab­lished a brick build­ing at 701 Dover­court Rd., nes­tled south of Bloor Street. Aptly named “The Church,” this loft con­ver­sion will be carved from this neo-gothic church.

“Because of its unique­ness, this loft con­ver­sion is sure to increase in value once released to the pub­lic,” offers Sha­keel Walji of The Walsh Group, the com­pany head­ing brand­ing and mar­ket­ing for the project.

While any Toronto loft con­ver­sion is a hot com­mod­ity, a church loft con­ver­sion truly is a rar­ity, says Brad Lamb, head­ing sales for this project. “We’ve never been involved in a church loft con­ver­sion, and there have been a hand­ful… in the city – less than half a dozen, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”

Lamb calls The Church the “holy grail of super-cool condo liv­ing.” Because a project like this doesn’t come often, it truly is a labour of love for those involved. “They gen­er­ally have to be an archi­tect or con­trac­tor to under­stand the intri­ca­cies and cost,” says Lamb. “It’s always more money to do one of these church loft con­ver­sions than it is build­ing from scratch.”

For Archi­tect Bernard Watt, a “labour of love” may be an under­state­ment. As the name behind The Church‘s devel­oper Dovenco and BWA Archi­tect, Watt has spent the last 21 years recy­cling mar­gin­ally used build­ings in down­town Toronto, includ­ing the leg­endary Creed Build­ings loft con­ver­sion from a fur ware­house, Har­court Mews loft con­ver­sion from an exist­ing church, and high-rise, mixed-use projects like Lawrence Park, Bloor­walk and 99 Hay­den con­do­mini­ums.

Says Watt, loft con­ver­sions are com­monly ware­houses, fac­to­ries and indus­trial build­ings reworked into res­i­den­tial spaces. “Those tend to be repet­i­tive struc­tures, so it’s rel­a­tively easy to cut into small units like lofts. A church doesn’t have that. It’s a totally dif­fer­ent space to work from.”

The trans­for­ma­tion of the church into 28 unique lofts has its chal­lenges. Watt describes that slanted floors designed to accom­mo­date the parish­ioners’ view from the pews, and the U-shaped bal­cony. “Most of it will be removed and replaced,” he explains. “We’re keep­ing the exte­rior wall of the church and the roof.” The new lofts, he says, will be rebuilt from within.

Key to the building’s strong street pres­ence are the two sym­met­ri­cal steeples tow­er­ing over Dover­court Road. The building’s exte­rior mate­ri­als and details will be restored, and com­ple­mented by a new urban front garden.

Watt describes inte­ri­ors as contemporary-heritage. “What we’re try­ing to say with that is, the inte­ri­ors will be very mod­ern, clean, ele­gant, sim­ple look­ing,” result­ing in a style that empha­sizes the new and mod­ern, over­lap­ping the old and his­toric. “We’re not try­ing to make units that look old and tra­di­tional, we’re play­ing on that contrast.”

Watt pays homage to the building’s breath­tak­ing inte­ri­ors by con­vert­ing the cen­tral church area into an atrium, which will greet res­i­dents and guests with its orig­i­nal octag­o­nal, stained-glass sky­light embed­ded in the ceil­ing high above, adorned with turn-of-the-century flo­ral motifs.

Through the atrium and to the lofts, pur­chasers will find a col­lec­tion of one– and two-storey loft designs, rang­ing from 614 to 1,484 sq. ft. With 24 floor plans to choose from, and only 28 lofts, the designs are unique, incor­po­rat­ing con­tem­po­rary details and ele­ments from the orig­i­nal build­ing that was fin­ished in 1906.

The ultra-modern, Italian-imported kitchens; bath­rooms boast­ing clean lines; beau­ti­ful tile; new win­dows; bal­conies, ter­races and rooftop decks (as per plan) – it’s all in con­trast to the time­less beauty of the building’s orig­i­nal fea­tures that are being retained and restored – the exposed brick walls, soar­ing steel trusses, and cor­nice and vaulted ceil­ings soar­ing from nine to 20 ft. in height.

“That this par­tic­u­lar devel­oper has decided to offer a fin­ish­ing pack­age – no other church loft con­ver­sion in the city, in the core, has ever offered such a high-end, lux­u­ri­ous qual­ity of kitchens, appli­ances, bath­room mate­ri­als and floor­ing – he’s really step­ping it up,” adds Lamb.

The jewel in the crown are the stained-glass win­dows that appear in 20 of the 28 lofts, in some cases, two or three per unit in var­i­ous sizes, stretch­ing from floor to ceil­ing, fil­ter­ing a flood of gen­tly coloured nat­ural light into the liv­ing space.

The twin tow­ers, which set the tone of the building’s exte­rior and the streetscape, make their mark on inte­ri­ors as well, employed dif­fer­ently in the plans that incor­po­rate them. In one loft, for exam­ple, the tower is a bed­room. In another, the tower is the kitchen. “Imag­ine, enter­tain­ing and hav­ing your kitchen and din­ing room in that kind of space,” says Walji. “It’s tremendous!”

Another excit­ing fea­ture of The Church is that the devel­oper and archi­tect are one and the same. Those explor­ing the real estate ter­rain might expect some bumps in the road, result­ing in delays. “The main advan­tage [here] is that there’s much more con­trol over what’s hap­pen­ing on site,” says Watt. “This is a very chal­leng­ing project to do, and not any devel­oper with jump into it.

“We’re not doing a cookie-cutter repeat of a project we did last year. It’s full of sur­prises. Once you start get­ting into the orig­i­nal build­ing and its addi­tion, you start uncov­er­ing and dis­cov­er­ing things about it.”

Says Watt, with a large team of con­sul­tants, no mat­ter what project, the process gets con­vo­luted. “The advan­tage to us is, the decision-making process is sim­ple and informed, more effi­cient and faster… You have one head that is mak­ing all the right deci­sions based on a lot of experience.”

The build­ing has long boasted a strong pres­ence in this well estab­lished com­mu­nity, tucked within walk­ing dis­tance to Col­lege Street, Lit­tle Italy and Duf­ferin Grove Park. Priced from as low as $209,900 to as high as $649,900, The Church will appeal to young, urban pro­fes­sion­als. “Because there is a wide price-range, we’ll have an age group rang­ing from the mid-20s to the mid-60s, and older.” Lamb calls it a once-in-a-lifetime oppor­tu­nity – “these lofts will be gone within two weeks of us open­ing the doors, with­out a doubt.”

New Homes & Con­dos Mag­a­zine is an excel­lent source of hous­ing infor­ma­tion for those look­ing for infor­ma­tion on new con­dos and lofts in Ontario, Canada. We offer the most up-to-date infor­ma­tion on new com­mu­ni­ties across the Greater Toronto Area.

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