Every time the cow bell rang, eager loft buyers knew that the price was going up
This is one of the city’s most successful loft conversion projects, in a downtown condo and loft market that is clearly nowhere near cooling off – and in a neighbourhood that has recently left some experienced developers licking their wounds.
Buyers at the Tannery Lofts on Dundas Street East near River Street benefit from a particularly good set of loft features — in a city where the definition of loft is frequently stretched beyond recognition.
The developer of the Tannery Lofts was Walsh Development Group, which handled the conversion of the old Gillette razor factory on Adelaide Street East into Liberty Lofts. 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 smallest loft is a 443 square-foot unit, while the largest loft is 1,300 square feet. On a square-foot basis, prices used to be lower, but are now 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 converted the Malthouse at Queen Street East and River Street into 26 townhouse lofts, showing the area has potential.
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; 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.
Despite the Tannery Lofts‘s recently derelict look, Walsh Development created a winner. 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 Tannery Lofts emphasize key loft features such as sandblasted brick, the extra-large doors, a refurbished factory elevator car and optional roof decks.
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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