Full steam ahead for plant’s loft conversion
In a city where the skyline is dotted with construction cranes, at least one condo project now underway is noteworthy for being built without one of these highly visible symbols of the Toronto condo building boom. The Steam Plant Lofts in downtown Toronto is converting an old power plant into a six storey, loft-style condo project with 29 units.
Converting old industrial buildings - with their sturdy structural systems, high ceilings and banks of oversized windows - is a tried-and-true recipe for success in Toronto’s downtown condo market.
However, there’s one, not-so-little problem with the loft conversion process for The Steam Plant Lofts: a 61-metre-high smokestack. The solution was to build the Toronto condo development the old-fashioned way.
Constructed in 1953, the building being transformed into The Steam Plant Lofts was the power plant for the Wellesley and Princess Margaret hospitals. (The Wellesley and the original Princess Margaret have since been demolished and their former sites are slated for highrise condos.)The Toronto loft conversion involves doubling the power plant’s original height of approximately three storeys.
The work requires adding new foundations and increasing the size of the original foundations, as well as adding new concrete shear walls and slab floors.
During demolition, old boilers and other power-generating equipment had to be dismantled and removed, along with some of the building’s original structural system of steel beams and columns.
While the smokestack may have been a curse during construction, it’s proved to be a blessing on the sales side. Three units built inside the cleaned-out smokestack will have a round bedroom or den and the stack’s original red-brick work exposed.
Straightaway, the stack was the unique feature - all the units with rooms in the stack, they all went the first day.One-bedroom condos and units with one bedroom plus den remain available in The Steam Plant Lofts. Prices range from $234,900 to $339,900. Parking spots are $25,000, storage lockers are included in the price and monthly maintenance fees are estimated at 39 cents per square foot.
Occupancy is expected to begin in May 2007.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960
