Tag Archives: don mills
The good Sheppard corridor
Suzanne Wintrob – National Post
Clifford Korman and his team at Kirkor Architects and Planning are immersed in condos. On the Sheppard corridor alone, the senior partner, architect and urban planner has been overseeing the design of more than of 20 condominium towers. Why? Because “Sheppard is a great street and I believe in it,” Mr. Korman says.
Among Kirkor’s current projects are Tridel’s Hullmark Centre, Rockport Group’s Twenty One Clairtrell and Phantom Development’s Jade Condominiums.
Given the 25- to 40-year-old demographic that’s moving in, Mr. Korman is building suites with bold designs to hold their interest. He says many buyers are immigrants — or children of immigrants — from Korea, Iran and Asia who “like modern-contemporary-with-lots-of-glass buildings and they like high-end finished spaces. They don’t need big areas — they’re not used to it — and they’re pleased to buy smaller units at top-quality fitments.”
Empty nesters, though, are “a rarity in the Sheppard corridor,” Mr. Korman says. Instead, they’re moving farther south to Eglinton and Bayview for larger, more luxurious 1,200- to 2,000-sq.-ft. units such as those at Kirkor-designed Blythwood at Huntington by Tridel.
Here’s a sampling of projects:
Argento
26 storeys, 290 units (plus nine townhomes not yet released) Builder Tridel Location Don Mills and York Mills Suite Availability 77% sold. From 550 to 998 sq. ft. and priced from $288,000 to $509,000 Hot Tickets Nestled within the Don Ravine system and overlooking the Donalda Golf and Country Club Occupancy Summer 2014
Blythwood at Huntington
Nine storeys, 118 units (Blythwood is the first of two towers in the Huntington community) Builders Tridel and Concert Properties Location Bayview and Lawrence Suite Availability 70% sold. Two-bedrooms from 1,121 to 2,879 sq. ft. and priced from $755,000 to $1,925,000 Hot Tickets Nine-ft. ceilings, LEED candidate Status Under construction Occupancy Spring 2013
Burkebrook
21 three-storey condominium townhomes Builder The Daniels Location Bayview and Lawrence Suite Availability Only four townhomes remain. 1,947 to more than 2,000 sq. ft. and priced from the mid $900,000s to $996,900 Hot Tickets Double-car garage, charming front porch, gas fireplaces, large outdoor cedar-decked terrace and lush landscaping; residents can enjoy the private amenities of the Kilgour Club, a recreational, fitness and social hub located in Phase 1 of Kilgour Estate Status Under construction Occupancy 2012
Canterbury Lawrence Park
A collection of 174 townhomes Builder Tribute Communities Location Bayview and Blythwood Suite Availability From 1,650 to 1,997 sq. ft. and priced from $697,990 to $1,096,990 Hot Tickets Situated in a park-like ravine setting in a prestigious Bayview neighbourhood minutes to the exclusive Granite Club; underground parking with direct suite access Status Under construction Occupancy July 2013
The Dream Tower at Emerald City
25 storey, 316 units — the third of six towers creating the Emerald City master-planned community Builder Elad Canada Location Sheppard and Don Mills Suite Availability 523 to 1,265 sq. ft. and priced from the mid-$200,000s Hot Tickets Ground-floor lobby with concierge services, elegant sitting area with mail room, billiards area, theatre, indoor pool, outdoor terrace Status Tower 1 under construction Occupancy December 2014
Flaire
Two 11-storey towers with a four-storey podium, 296 units Builders FRAM Building Group and The Cadillac Fairview Location Lawrence and Don Mills Suite Availability From 504 to 1,100 sq. ft. and priced from mid-$200,000s to mid-$500,000s Hot Tickets Resort-like front courtyard, fireside lounge, self-serve pet spa, landscaped rooftop terrace with barbecue pits and Miami-inspired cabanas Status Sales office just opened Occupancy December 2014
Leslie Boutique Residences
11 storeys, 182 units Builder Great Lands Location Old Leslie and Sheppard Suite Availability 90% sold. From 549 to 1,077 sq. ft. and priced from $265,000 Hot Ticket Steps from Leslie Street subway station Status Under construction Occupancy Spring 2013
LIV LOFTS
14 storeys, 175 units Builder FRAM and Cadillac Fairview Location 75 The Donway West Suite Availability More than 70% sold. From 395 to 940 sq. ft., including both flats and four townhouse units and priced from the mid-$200,000s Hot Tickets Retrofit conversion of an existing office tower into a loft-style condominium with 10-ft. ceilings; Club Liv rooftop for outdoor movies under the stars, a hot tub with panoramic views of the city, al fresco dining and barbecuing, indoor/outdoor fireplace, sun tanning deck and private lounges Status Pre-construction Occupancy Mid-2013
ALTO and PARKSIDE at Atria
First phase in the Atria community, Alto is a 43-storey, 578-unit tower connected to the eight-storey Parkside by a grand central lobby and courtyard entrance Builder Tridel Location Sheppard and Highway 404 Suite Availability 66% sold. 545 to 1,207 sq. ft. and priced from $288,000 Hot Tickets Party room with bar and fireplace lounge, private dining room and billiards lounge Status Now open Occupancy 2015
Reflections
12 storeys, 106 units Builders FRAM and Cadillac Fairview Location 85 The Donway West Suite Availability Only three units remain, all 1,225-sq.-ft., two-bedroom plus den priced from $605,900 Hot Tickets Inaugural condominium building at Shops at Don Mills, seeking LEED certification Status Under construction Occupancy Spring 2013
Scenic III
18 storeys, 316 units plus 10 townhomes Builder Aspen Ridge Homes Location Leslie and Eglinton Suite Availability 75% sold. From 425 to 907 sq. ft. and priced from $187,990 to $438,990, townhomes from the mid-$600,000s Hot Tickets Styled like a hilltop European village with grade-related townhomes and cascading terraces leading gradually to the taller towers, and street lamps and benches dotting the pathways Status Open for sales Occupancy Spring 2014
St. Gabriel Manor
Eight floors, 96 units Builder Shane Baghai Location Bayview and Sheppard Suite Availability Only two suites left: a 705-sq.-ft. one-bedroom plus den for $408,000 and a 1,035-sq.-ft. two-bedroom for $595,000 Hot Tickets European inspired architectural detailing, balconies, covered entranceway and classic brick exterior; each floor has different colour palette and theme inspired by the builder’s travels to Europe Status Complete Occupancy Now
Twenty One Clairtrell
Seven storeys, 128 units Builder The Rockport Group Location Sheppard and Bayview Suite Availability 98% sold. From 535 to 1,572 sq. ft. and priced from $299,900 to $1,180,900 Hot Tickets Walking distance to Bayview Village and TTC; sixth-floor residents’ terrace and private terraces for seventh-floor penthouses Status Under construction Occupancy Fall 2012
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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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Reading the narrative of Toronto’s mid-century architecture
Dave LeBlanc – Globe and Mail
Mid-century modern architecture, whether private homes or public buildings, is well represented in Toronto, but save for Don Mills or the financial district, much of it is isolated and difficult to find.
Those of us who love this period, which spans 1945 to 1975, have become less and less shy in shouting from the rooftops (with every television commercial that uses the era as backdrop and with Mad Men constantly winning Emmys, our courage is bolstered). The problem is, some of us are isolated and hard to find.
Luckily, Robert Moffatt decided to create a blog.
On offer at robertmoffatt115.wordpress.com is Toronto Modern, a treasure-trove of over 50 entries covering everything from public buildings, such as the crown-shaped 1961 Lord Lansdowne Public School on Robert Street or the demolished 1957 Lord Simcoe Hotel at King and University (which lasted a mere 22 years) to private homes such as Ron Thom’s well known Fraser residence on Old George Place or the little known George Eber gem on Eastview Crescent designed for Angus Critchley-Waring in 1961.
I first met Mr. Moffatt last November at a North York symposium on Modernist architecture and have followed his blog ever since, delighting particularly in his ability to ferret out often overlooked buildings such as the “immaculate” Coca-Cola headquarters on Overlea Boulevard. Even more impressive is that Mr. Moffatt is a Vancouver native.
On a gloriously warm October day, we met for an “architour” in front of Henry Fliess’s 1968 Towne Apartments on St. Clair Avenue E. (covered here in 2008), where I learned his appreciation of the genre began in the early 1990s. Eventually, he joined Heritage Vancouver and the B.C. branch of DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement). He conducted research for his monthly column in the Heritage Vancouver newsletter by taking exploratory walks, snapping photos, building a personal library and, at the UBC library, “digging up musty old magazines” such as the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Journal. “By the time I left [Vancouver] I had a banker’s box full from one end to the other of photocopies,” he said. Since moving here in 2002, he’s done much the same thing when not hard at work in the marketing department of Moriyama & Teshima Architects.
As we walk towards Yonge, we discuss how the Deer Park neighbourhood has always been upscale and, as such, boasts a higher quality of building stock. We spot the metal relief panels on Charles Dolphin’s 1954 Arthur Meighen building, take in the award-winning 1975 stainless steel Weston octagon by Leslie Rebanks and, further west, the Deco-glorious Fleetwood and Park Lane apartments, both built in 1938.
“It’s great they’ve kept what I guess are the original doors,” he says of the Fleetwood. “A lot of them had these custom-made or high-quality doors and door hardware… so often when they’re updated that gets tossed out and replaced by some generic catalogue anodized aluminum piece.”
We admire the mid-60s Desjardin building by WZMH at 95 St. Clair Ave. W., which also contains WZMH’s offices – they “built half of downtown Canada” jokes Mr. Moffatt – and the current condo conversion of the exquisite former Imperial Oil building to pause at the southeast corner of Avenue Road and St. Clair. Now the Ministry of Environment building, Mr. Moffatt informs me the “crisp” black-and-silver Modernist tower was originally designed for General Steel Wares by Bregman and Hamann in 1964.
We look north to admire British-born architect Peter Dickinson’s apartment tower at 561 Avenue Rd. “This I think is one of the best angles of any building in Toronto … with the floating roof and these beautiful mature trees all around it and the older house in front,” he decides – and then move further west to compare two low-rise residential buildings by Estonian-born Uno Prii. 90 Warren Rd., which is featured in one of Mr. Moffatt’s posts, is rather “dour” for this usually buoyant flower-power architect save for the porte-cochere, which resembles “an English toast rack.” To find Prii’s “playful side” we inspect 265 Russell Hill Rd., and find blue glazed brick, decorative concrete block and concrete arches over the windows.
After a long discussion on the future of the Crashley residence on Old George Place, which has been “left as a dismembered corpse,” we find ourselves on Ardwold Gate considering what may be the city’s only fully Brutalist home by another Estonian, Taivo Kapsi, and a more conventional 1960 Modernist home by Gordon Adamson for the president of the Southam newspaper empire. The 1968 Brutalist home has a fascinating history, which includes murder, but I’ll leave that to Mr. Moffatt’s thoroughly researched and highly readable Toronto Modern to tell (see “A walk along Ardwold Gate”).
It’s worth a visit, and then another after that, since Mr. Moffatt has promised regular record keeping. “These places transcend just simply a place to live in or a place to work in,” he finishes. There’s also the constant threat of demolition, which makes documentation even more important: “Demolishing a major work by a major architect, you could probably equate that to somebody throwing a Group of Seven painting into a wood chipper.”
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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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Communtity Focus — North York
by Amy West – New Dreamhomes & Condominiums Magazine
The suburbs meet the city in North York, making it an attractive choice for new homebuyers. Thanks to a new subway extension along Sheppard Avenue, high-rise condos such as Empire’s C-Condos and Tridel’s Pulse are cropping up along the central North York corridor that runs from Finch to Sheppard, while single-family dwellings still dominate east and west of Yonge Street.
Originally North York was known as an agricultural hub made up of scattered villages. It was formed out of the rural section of the township of York. As North York became more urbanized, it was named a borough and later a city. The area boomed following World War II, and by the 1950s and 1960s it resembled other sprawling North American suburbs. To commemorate receiving its city charter on Valentine’s Day, its corporate slogan was “The City With Heart,†and it now forms the largest part of the area served by the North York community council—a committee of Toronto city council.
With a population of around 650,000, the North York of today forms the central part of the northern half of Toronto. Until 1998, it was one of six municipalities that comprised the larger municipal structure of Metropolitan Toronto. That year, the provincial government passed legislation merging these municipalities into a new amalgamated city.
Residents have easy access to a variety of cultural and entertainment venues. Directly beside the old city hall is the Toronto Centre for the Arts, previously known as the Ford Centre for Performing Arts, which opened in 1993. It houses three theatres and features musicals, theatre productions, and other performing arts.
Directly south of city hall in the same complex is the former North York Board of Education building, now home to the Toronto District School Board. To the north in the complex is a mall with subway access. The mall is connected to the North York Central library, the largest full-service library in Toronto. It is a part of a much larger facility that includes a school board work station, swimming pool, snack bar, veterans centre, and hotel—the rooms of which look down on the interior of the mall.
Black Creek Pioneer Village, an authentic 19th-century township, and the Ontario Science Centre, which boasts over 800 exhibits, are North York’s primary attractions. A military base and aircraft manufacturing facility are located at Downsview, although much of the land is now being transformed into a park.
Two of Ontario’s largest shopping malls, Yorkdale Shopping Centre and Fairview Mall, are in North York along with the smaller Don Mills Centre and Sheppard Plaza. The city is also home to York University and Osgoode Hall Law School, as well as major health-care facilities such as North York General Hospital, Humber River Regional Hospital, and the massive Sunnybrook Hospital complex, which includes a veterans residence and regional trauma centre.
A multitude of sports clubs dot the area, including the North York Storm (a girls’ hockey league), Gwendolen Tennis Club, and the North York Aquatic Club, which was founded in 1958 as the North York Lions Swim Club and has produced many Olympian swimmers.
The growing popularity of this area can be witnessed by the fact that the section of Highway 401 that traverses it is the busiest section of freeway in North America, exceeding 400,000 vehicles per day and widening to 21 lanes at its intersection with Highway 404.
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