The Tannery Lofts
Building has a long industrial history - from soap to cigars to leather
Reprinted from The Globe and Mail
The developer of the Tannery Lofts is Walsh Development Group, which completed the conversion of the old Gillette razor factory on Adelaide Street East into the Liberty Lofts years ago. With the Tannery Lofts, the company waded into a neighbourhood where two other experienced developers had recently been forced to pull their loft projects from the market because of poor response.
Demand for the Tannery Lofts came from a highly tuned marketing strategy that left little to chance. The sales office was compact, and the number of sales staff low, so that as the day progressed a line formed and excitement grew. Some people were filing out contracts on cardboard boxes. While others waited their turn, it was not unusual for prices to rise by $5,000.
Now that the building is complete, people have a chance at the last units available from the builder, or those now being resold by the original owners. The lofts range in size from the smallest, a 443 square-foot unit, to the largest at 1,300 square feet. On a square-foot basis, prices start below city averages, more in line with some resale prices at popular existing loft buildings.
Other recent sales efforts in the area have not done so well. Atria Developments, for example, signed up only a handful of buyers for its LTD lofts before closing the sales office last November, two months after opening it. The building at Queen Street and Carlaw Avenue was to have included 118 lofts designed by the architectural firm Kohn Shnier. The family-owned developer had successfully completed the iZone live/work lofts across the street a short time earlier.
Hans Jain, a principle with Atria, said the company is re-evaluating the LTD project and could re-launch a lower-priced, stripped-down version this year. Initially, Atria aimed for buyers wealthier and more sophisticated than first-timers, offering top-of-the-line finishes, big units averaging 880 square feet, and an unusually large amount of interior common space. But this kind of buyer was just not interested in the neighbourhood, Mr. Jain says.
Inaugural Source, which converted the Malthouse Loft Towns at Queen Street East and River Street into 26 townhouse lofts, also pulled another project because of weak interest. Ron Herczeg, the developer, blamed a softening marketplace where product now has to be unique if it is going to sell well.
Lofts are a niche market with unique ingredients that are often hard to pinpoint, and numerous developers who have successful track records with condos have met their match with lofts.
Among the special features added to the Tannery Lofts to help with their marketability are: extra-large wooden doors — 8 feet by 4 feet — at entrances; roof decks sold separately for between $12,500 and $20,000; sliding walls that partition sleeping areas; partial height walls to block off other areas; and raised flooring in some areas with extra storage space built underneath.
Early on in the project, the Tannery Lofts marketing team decided prices should be competitively set. The group felt that some downtown developers were getting greedy and it didn’t want to fall into the same temptation. The team also thought that a project in the east end of the city had to offer more value than something closer to the centre or on the west side.
Despite the tannery’s derelict look, Walsh Development saw that the building had potential. The 13-foot ceilings, massive windows and thick wood beams and posts — some naturally charred by a fire years ago — are rare in Toronto lofts.
The building had a long industrial history, including years as a soap factory. It has also been know as the Adam Beck Cigar Box Manufacturing Company Building. But leather has more market appeal, so the property was branded appropriately.
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