By Tony Wong – Toronto Star

A new high­rise will soar at 1 Bloor, con­sid­ered one of Toronto’s most pres­ti­gious addresses. But it looks like for­mer buy­ers of the con­do­minium project will have to get back in line if they still want a home in the blue-chip neighbourhood.

Toronto-based Great Gulf Group of Com­pa­nies con­firmed to the Toronto Star yes­ter­day it had pur­chased the stalled condo devel­op­ment from Kazakhstan-based Bazis Inter­na­tional.

The new owner of the site at the cor­ner of Bloor and Yonge streets says it intends to build a high-rise devel­op­ment that will include retail and housing.

“We are work­ing very dili­gently to see what is appro­pri­ate for that cor­ner, which we envi­sion to be some kind of mixed-use devel­op­ment,” said Jerry Patava, pres­i­dent and CEO of the company.

“Right now we are look­ing at what we can do, although it’s too early to deter­mine what exactly will be there.”

An affil­i­ate com­pany of Great Gulf pur­chased the prop­erty from Bazis with a clos­ing in Sep­tem­ber, Patava said.

Bazis, the orig­i­nal devel­oper, had sold pur­chasers plans for a strik­ing tower design that was sup­posed to be the tallest in the city.

Great Gulf’s Patava said his com­pany would likely be in touch with condo buy­ers to see if they are still inter­ested in liv­ing at 1 Bloor.

“Right now it’s a blank slate,” he said. “We have no con­trac­tual oblig­a­tion to the for­mer buy­ers. But obvi­ously they thought this was a great place to live.

“It’s one of the most attrac­tive cor­ners in Canada.”

Pur­chasers will receive their deposit money back, Bazis Inter­na­tional said in a state­ment. About 500 pur­chasers put down $70 mil­lion in deposits for their units. Real­tors who sold the units and the com­pany have been flooded with calls from wor­ried buyers.

“Bazis Inter­na­tional wishes to assure all pur­chasers at One Bloor that their deposit money placed for a con­do­minium suite is in the vendor’s solicitor’s trust account and earn­ing inter­est,” the state­ment said.

Great Gulf Group builds homes, shop­ping malls and office tow­ers through­out North Amer­ica. It owns the Taboo resort in Muskoka and its Great Gulf Homes sub­sidiary is one of the top five res­i­den­tial builders in the GTA by volume.

The com­pany also knows the lux­ury mar­ket in Toronto, hav­ing built the nearby 18 Yorkville condo complex.

The pri­vately held com­pany was formed in 1975 by pub­lic­ity shy broth­ers Elly and Nor­man Reis­man. Their brother Sam, CEO of invest­ment bank Rose Corp., was the dri­ving force behind the Film­port movie com­plex in Toronto before sell­ing his own­er­ship stake ear­lier this year.

The sale of 1 Bloor sig­nals the end of an at-times con­tentious rela­tion­ship between Bazis and buy­ers who wanted to know whether they would ever see their units built.

Hun­dreds of buy­ers lined up for weeks to own a unit in 2007. Some real­tors hired stu­dents to stand in line for them. Units sold for from $500,000 and up; the pent­house was report­edly sold for $25 mil­lion to a Hong Kong businessman.

Bazis’s prob­lems started due to the vicious credit crunch that began last fall with the bank­ruptcy of New York invest­ment bank Lehman Bros., the finan­cial mus­cle behind the deal.

Bazis devel­oper Michael Gold had stopped pay­ments on a $46 mil­lion loan in Decem­ber. When the loan con­tin­ued to be in default, a con­sor­tium of lenders tried to place the project in receivership.

The group offered $50.5 mil­lion to Gold. But he ended up sell­ing the prop­erty to Great Gulf for a sum believed to be sub­stan­tially higher.

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