Donna Laporte – Yourhome​.ca

On a sul­try sum­mer after­noon, sculpted bod­ies loll on com­fort­able loungers and cov­ered cabanas high above the fray, chat­ting on cell­phones or lis­ten­ing to music, seem­ingly obliv­i­ous to the worka­day world below.

Nearby sky­scrap­ers tower above, a stun­ning back­drop to the new play­grounds of the hip, young inhabitants.

Wel­come to the new world of condo liv­ing, where out­door patios and rooftops are the new club scene.

These are not your par­ents’ con­dos.

Out­door pools, mist­ing sta­tions, water fea­tures, bars and bar­be­cues — every­thing you could want with­out leav­ing home. It’s a Stay­ca­tion with a cap­i­tal “S” – everything’s kicked up a notch.

“Smaller spaces require what used to be called a café soci­ety in order to func­tion prop­erly,” accord­ing to Gary Sil­ver­berg, devel­oper of Art Con­dos on Dover­cort Rd. in the trendy West Queen West neighbourhood.

Art’s fifth-floor out­door patio is designed to have plenty of inti­mate seat­ing areas, so that some peo­ple can have pri­vacy while oth­ers enter­tain on the large banquettes.

“We started with a fire pit and a glass beach,” he says. “The idea was to make the space year-round, to make exten­sions of rooms that would allow socialization.”

In sum­mer, there’s a hot tub with show­ers nearby.

Dif­fer­ent tex­tures and sur­faces, trel­lises and fences will help give a feel­ing of sep­a­ra­tion, he says. Inside, just off the patio, is a huge enter­tain­ment area, big enough to hold dif­fer­ent groups at the same time.

He cred­its 3^rd Uncle Design, which revamped the Drake Hotel.

“They under­stood the demo­graph­ics and what is hip and cool … they are very pro­gres­sive in their thought of enter­tain­ing and arts. We had the ben­e­fit of their expe­ri­ence to cre­ate this,” he says.

That club-like vibe is what Mark Reeve, a prin­ci­pal in Urban Cap­i­tal Prop­erty Group, was try­ing to achieve with Bou­tique One and Bou­tique Two, on Nel­son St. in the city’s core.

“One of the deci­sions we made early on was to cap­ture the style and flavour and expe­ri­ence of liv­ing in a bou­tique hotel — with­out all the hotel guests.”

Such hotels have beau­ti­ful roof ter­races, he says. Although he could have put pent­houses in that very valu­able space, he chose not to.

The post-recession real estate mar­ket has meant devel­op­ers are able to raise prices, and as a result, “We can afford to deliver more in terms of both archi­tec­ture and inte­rior design and amenities.”

And more is what peo­ple are demanding.

Con­dos are no longer a fall­back for those who wanted houses, says inte­rior designer Anna Simone, a part­ner in Cic­coni Simone.

Peo­ple live in them dif­fer­ently now, she says. They don’t want to com­pro­mise on out­door liv­ing, whether it’s on their own bal­cony or in a shared space.

Out­door liv­ing is not the same as out­door space, she emphasizes.

Because our sum­mers are short, peo­ple want to be out­doors in the shoul­der sea­sons, too, so fire pits are becom­ing de rigueur.

Simone worked on the Water­club, on Queens Quay at York St. in Toronto, which con­sists of three tow­ers that launched in 2004–2005. About 2,000 res­i­dents share a heated indoor/outdoor pool (out­door por­tion closed in win­ter), a third-floor bar­be­cue deck, plus a sep­a­rate ter­race with more bar­be­cues to han­dle the overflow.

Though it was hard to per­suade the devel­oper at first, “it is one of the hottest areas to date,” she says. “It is extremely successful.”

Simone says she sources fur­ni­ture from South Amer­ica, Bali — which has “phe­nom­e­nal value” — and China. If she can’t find it, she’ll design it and have it made. (At DNA3, for exam­ple, she’s hav­ing cabanas made).

A mix of quiet and inter­ac­tive areas is nec­es­sary. “Out­door liv­ing isn’t just about hav­ing vacant spaces, but pro­gram­ming them prop­erly,” she says.

The roughly 6,000-square-foot amenity space at DNA3 on King St. W. is going to be on the sec­ond floor, “which makes you feel like you are lit­er­ally in a tree house,” she says.

Riz Dhanji, vice pres­i­dent of sales and mar­ket­ing for Can­derel Res­i­den­tial, which is build­ing DNA3, says mar­ket­ing that space really paid off in sales.

“Peo­ple really took to it,” he says.

There will be four to six bar­be­cues, day beds with shaded cov­ers, loungers, trees and shrubbery.

Water fea­tures are another pop­u­lar attrac­tion and DNA3 will have a mist­ing sta­tion, which allows peo­ple to cool off easily.

“It’s like your own lit­tle oasis from South Beach in Miami,” he says.

Dhanji isn’t fond of out­door pools, say­ing they’re expen­sive to maintain.

Devel­oper Peter Freed feels dif­fer­ently. He says that rooftop pools were uncom­mon six years ago when he started putting them in. Most of his down­town projects have them.

“Peo­ple just love them,” he says. “There’s a cer­tain feel­ing about swim­ming on top of a build­ing that, until you do it once, it’s just incredible.”

You only have to scope out the out­door pool on the 16^th floor of the Thomp­son Hotel, with its jaw-dropping city views. Res­i­dents of Freed’s 550 Welling­ton St. W. condo have priv­i­leges there, as he built both projects.

“We look at every oppor­tu­nity (to do some­thing) on the roof when design­ing a build­ing,” Freed says.

His Thomp­son Res­i­dences will have one of North America’s longest infin­ity pools.

Out­door amenity space, with­out a pool, costs between $100,000 and $200,000, he esti­mates. With a pool, count on $500,000 to $1 mil­lion, not includ­ing fur­ni­ture, bar­be­cues, and other accoutrements.

Andrew Bock­ner, owner of Andrew Richard Designs, started design­ing fur­ni­ture for hos­pi­tal­ity and bou­tique hotels. So far, he has out­fit­ted 25 to 30 out­door amenity spaces in con­dos, with more in store.

He’s seen a real surge in the past four or five years, from util­i­tar­ian use of space — with pic­nic tables and bar­be­cues — to set­tings such as at Cres­ford Devel­op­ments’ CASA, on Charles St. E., with its “Tuuci” Stingray umbrel­las made of marine-grade fab­ric with pol­ished tita­nium, loungers, a heated year-round out­door pool, cedar slat arbour, two-sided gas fire­place and dou­ble bar­be­cues and prep area.

“The feed­back that we’ve got is unbe­liev­able,” he says. “Every project that we’re get­ting, whether it’s the same builder or not, want to do bet­ter and bet­ter and bet­ter for their poten­tial buyer.”

As well as Bou­tique One, he out­fit­ted NXT (also by Cres­ford) in the Win­der­mere Ave./Queensway area.

Maria Athana­soulis, Cresford’s vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing and sales, worked with Bock­ner to design cus­tom loungers accented in yel­low and grey based on some she saw in Europe.

“I wanted to make sure it felt like a five-star hotel,” she says.

An expan­sive pool and deck area on the main level, with two large din­ing tables under a trel­lis, accent lights embed­ded in the patio, umpteen loungers and plenty of space set the scene.

Peo­ple love it, she says. “You see it on people’s faces when we’re sell­ing our last units and they walk down and see the space. Fash­ion­able spaces attract fash­ion­able peo­ple. Usu­ally, everybody’s response is ‘Wow!’ “

And the ante keeps climbing.

Of One Bloor, whose ameni­ties Simone is design­ing, she says emphat­i­cally: “They are spec­tac­u­lar. They are beyond words.”

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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