$20-million for an apart­ment? Today, Toronto’s wealthy are aim­ing high

By Deirdre Kelly – Globe and Mail
A Toronto real estate agent opens the door on the swanki­est condo at 10 Bel­lair St., smack in the mid­dle of Yorkville. Like Bob Barker of Let’s Make a Deal, he stands back to let the audi­ence be wowed by the splen­dour hid­den inside the box.

“This guy’s shtick is mys­tery,” he says of the owner, point­ing to the arch­ing panes of opales­cent glass — a con­tem­po­rary take on Bellini’s embrac­ing walls at the Vat­i­can — that form the rotunda of this 4,000-square-foot condo perched high above the city.

“You see, this place is all about views, but he didn’t want to give it away too soon, and so there is just a hint of what is to come shin­ing through the glass panels.”

What is to come knocks your socks off. Ebony zebra wood, imported from Africa and laser-cut in three-metre-high sheets, lines walls that con­ceal a stereo sys­tem whose speak­ers cost more than a BMW.

A remote con­trol opens and closes the cur­tains on the floor-to-ceiling win­dows and, at another push of a but­ton, the microwave in the state-of-the-art kitchen reveals a drawer in which to cook food, invis­i­bly, silently. The laun­dry room is a stun­ner, dressed entirely in white Ital­ian mar­ble. In the mas­ter bed­room, a bath­tub in the mid­dle of the floor is filled by two nar­row streams of water falling straight down from the ceiling.

Besides an ensuite dress­ing room with steam shower and a large pro­jec­tion screen that descends on com­mand, there’s a built-in espresso machine — arm’s length from the king-sized bed that hangs, seem­ingly weight­less, from the wall. James Bond, eat your heart out.

Call it the gild­ing of Toronto. In a city where the condo is already king, the expected deliv­ery over the next two years of sev­eral hun­dred lux­ury con­dos in more than a half-dozen new build­ings — all within a two-block radius — is rais­ing the city apart­ment to golden calf status.

Adver­tise­ments in the New York Times for some of the new lux­ury con­dos being built in Yorkville, the com­pact area that stretches from Bay Street to Avenue Road, and from Dav­en­port to Bloor, make the location’s access to opu­lence its major sell­ing point: “One minute to Gucci! One minute to Chanel!” reads the bul­letin for One St. Thomas, mak­ing a world­wide dec­la­ra­tion, how­ever gush­ing, that Hog­town has finally arrived — in the eyes of the mega-rich anyway.

“Yorkville has become the new Upper East Side,” pro­nounces Mr. Mol­loy of a city that seems never able to escape com­par­isons to New York. “It is where you are going to find the finest res­i­dences, the most lux­u­ri­ous shop­ping, the most desired restau­rants, all within walk­ing dis­tance of each other.”

Land scarcity and demand, cou­pled with esca­lat­ing con­struc­tion costs, are dri­ving prices ever sky­ward. The con­dos are expected to range in price from $3-million for a mere 1,200-square-foot pied-à–terre to $20-million for the refur­bished 10,000-square-foot mod­ernist clas­sic, known locally as the Torno Pent­house, which boasts 5,000 square feet of wrap­around ter­races over­look­ing Yorkville to the north and the Royal Ontario Museum to the south.

Each stately plea­sure dome comes replete with lux­ury. No expense has been spared, for instance, in car­ry­ing out the plans of the Paris designer who cre­ated the res­i­dence hid­den within the 10 Bel­lair condo tower, home to a Toronto real estate devel­oper who requested anonymity. It’s a cas­tle in the sky. When it goes on the mar­ket, the apart­ment, with only two bed­rooms, is expected to list for $6-million.

That might seem a lot of money in a city where this week the main debate has been whether to raise the min­i­mum wage from $8 to $10.

But inter­na­tion­ally speak­ing, Toronto remains a bar­gain for peo­ple who wouldn’t think twice of pur­chas­ing a $15-million condo (as Bank of Mon­treal pres­i­dent and CEO Tony Com­per recently did at One St. Thomas) if it suits their lifestyle require­ments. And accord­ing to Toronto real estate agents in the high-end mar­ket, most such buy­ers are Cana­dian or have local roots.

“Condo devel­op­ment like this shows you are enter­ing into a more mature mar­ket boosted by land costs and den­si­ties,” Mr. Mol­loy says. “It’s the way a city that’s devel­op­ing prop­erly goes. I’d say it shows the city com­ing of age.”

Uber-agents, who cater to the car­riage trade, con­cur: “I have been sell­ing con­dos reg­u­larly in the $7-million range,” she says. “But when you think that in New York, a [unit] sells for $45-million, and it’s a co-op, we are truly a bar­gain for the kind of peo­ple who want this kind of lux­ury. Every­thing is custom-done, even the entry halls. It’s the height of the ceil­ings, the extras, all top-of-the-line, every­thing cus­tomized for the purchaser.”

The dizzy­ing Torno suite, located at 155 Cum­ber­land is a case in point.

Devel­oper Jon Love, with builder-to-the-rich Joe Bren­nan, is sell­ing it along with 13 new high-end con­dos, rang­ing in price from $4-million to $10-million. The new units will be located above and below the for­mer home of Toron­to­ni­ans Noah and Rose Torno — a his­tor­i­cally des­ig­nated suite, believed to have been designed by leg­endary mod­ernist archi­tect Philip John­ston in 1962, that is perched on top of an office building.

Both Mr. Love and Mr. Bren­nan have bought units them­selves in the prop­erty. Each will have 11-foot ceil­ings, cus­tom mill­work, pri­vate ele­va­tors and, as Mr. Bren­nan says, “any­thing else the cus­tomer wants.”

But this is not the only high-stakes condo game in town. From Torno’s tow­er­ing win­dows with sweep­ing views extend­ing all across the glit­ter­ing lake to Rochester, New York, Mr. Mol­loy eas­ily points out some of the other deluxe condo projects now sprout­ing diamond-tip wings within sight of Yonge and Bloor. By their scaf­fold­ing shall ye know them.

The new Hazel­ton Hotel and Pri­vate Res­i­dences bor­ders the district’s defin­ing streets of Yorkville and Hazel­ton. Behold, too, the Regency at the north­west cor­ner of Bay and Yorkville, and another project at 100 Yorkville; and while it’s not yet started, still another high-end project is slated for Charles Street on land now belong­ing to the Lycée Français. And sources indi­cate some sales in excess of $4-million for units at the new Four Sea­sons condo-hotel, to be housed in a 55-story tower with about 90 residences.

Out­side the Yorkville zone, posh sells well too. Closer to the finan­cial dis­trict, there are $7-million con­dos for sale at the Ritz-Carlton, now under con­struc­tion, and the Trump Tower, with prices as high as $12-million.

Back near Yorkville, there is also the afore­men­tioned One St. Thomas, where Mr. Com­per is mov­ing in and where Toronto tycoon George Mann has also pur­chased an entire pent­house floor for mil­lions upon mil­lions. The build­ing sits across the street from the Wind­sor Arms, the land­mark hotel where the likes of Hol­ly­wood actor Richard Gere stay when in town. There are pri­vate res­i­dences inside, spec­tac­u­larly appointed, that belong to locals such as socialite Nancy Pencer and Hair Club for Men entre­pre­neur Steve Hudson.

A widow, Elaine James, whose late hus­band made the fam­ily money in finance and real estate, says she moved into her 3,450-square-foot condo (esti­mated list price, $3.5-million) after down­siz­ing from a sub­stan­tial down­town Toronto home that was exquis­itely dec­o­rated in the French coun­try style. Many of her antiques have made the tran­si­tion to the apartment.

The point about the con­dos is for the own­ers not to feel squeezed inside a box of liv­ing space within a build­ing tower but instead to feel safe and sound and sur­rounded by lux­ury, Ms. James says. “These are peo­ple com­ing from big­ger homes. They are not want­ing smaller spaces as much as they are want­ing con­dos that allow them the con­ve­niences of loca­tion and the con­tin­u­a­tion of a lifestyle they were used to.”

Another advan­tage of the new lux­ury condo is pri­vacy: Here, wealth is con­cealed from pub­lic view behind the anonymity of a recep­tion desk. The names of high-rolling pur­chasers are hard to come by, because they tend to insist on con­fi­den­tial­ity agree­ments, says Mr. Mol­loy. “Often we agents don’t even know who’s buying.”

It dove­tails with what Mr. Molloy’s col­league, Bar­bara Tem­ple, has observed about high-end condo clients: “These are peo­ple who want to come into their place, close the door, and feel reas­sured that no one would even know they were here.”

But agent Danny See, who has sold all 18 units in the new Hazel­ton Hotel, rang­ing in price from $3-million to $10-million, includ­ing a pent­house to a Toronto busi­ness­man who also took 18 park­ing spots, says, in ele­gant dou­ble­s­peak, that the wealth in these new con­dos “isn’t hid­den — it’s just less exposed.”

And speak­ing of wealth, the condo fees at the Hazel­ton — which will cover access to all hotel ameni­ties, includ­ing a pri­vate screen­ing room, but will exclude basics such as util­i­ties, prop­erty taxes and cable — will run an aver­age of $80 a square foot. That means the 8,000-square-foot pent­house will cost an extra $6,400 a month to maintain.

Mr. See says that the costs are worth it for some people.

“This area is the most valu­able real estate in Toronto. It’s nat­ural for every cos­mopoli­tan city to have its prime area and Yorkville has become it.”

Mr. Mol­loy, still beam­ing about the many hid­den splen­dours in the suite at 10 Bel­lair, sec­onds that motion.

“In the end, real estate is just about loca­tion and when you have great views, then it just becomes, well, perfect.”

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