Ryan Starr – Toronto Star

This month marks 10 years since the Ontario Municipal Board gave Minto the green light to build Midtown, a twin-tower condo project just south of Yonge and Eglinton that had been the source of much heated controversy.

Despite pushback from the community and city council over the 37- and 54-storey towers, Midtown – which council eventually approved by a vote of 23-17 – was completed in 2008 and helped paved the path for subsequent high-rise condo development in Toronto.

“Today 50-, 60- or 70-storey buildings are bandied about in numerous locations around the city, without a whole big issue about height and density,” notes Chris Sherriff-Scott, senior vice-president of Minto Communities.

“But before Midtown went through the mill, height and density were huge issues for the city, which was still fussing about (how tall the buildings were) and not about what was going on at the street level.

“So we take particular pride in that development.”

Minto Midtown also helped clear the way for the recent surge of condo projects at Yonge and Eglinton, a once-prominent intersection that had been in decline since the 1970s. “That area was actually undergoing a net loss in population the year we started (Midtown),” Sherriff-Scott says. “Since then, it’s changed dramatically.”

Although Midtown represented a milestone for Minto and the city, it’s just one example of the innovative approach to development that the Ottawa-based company has demonstrated since it started doing business back in the 1950s.

In its six decades since, the family-owned Minto Group has developed more than 70,000 homes, 17,000 residential apartments and more than 2 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space across Canada and the U.S.

Minto was also an early industry leader in sustainable home construction and, in 2011, was named Green Builder of the Year by the Ontario Home Builders’ Association, the third time in four years the company received the award.

With operations in Toronto, Ottawa and Florida, Minto builds an average of 2,000 homes per year. (Its current Toronto condo projects include 30 Roe at Yonge and Roehampton, Winter Garden in Thornhill, 88 at Yonge and Sheppard, and 775 King West.)

The company traces its roots to Ottawa, where it launched in 1955 as Mercury Homes, a suburban home builder founded by the Greenberg brothers: Louis, Gilbert, Irving and Lorry.

The Greenbergs developed an “assembly-line” approach to homebuilding that was novel for the times.

“Builders in those days didn’t build with a construction schedule,” notes Sherriff-Scott. “Most builders didn’t have a production-line mentality in terms of providing certainty about how many days it would take to deliver a house and when things were expected to arrive on site.”

Rather than rely on outside suppliers for building materials, the Greenbergs purchased a mill and began manufacturing their own kitchens, roof trusses and trim.

“By introducing an industrial process, it brought a lot more certainty,” Sherriff-Scott says.

The company changed its name to Minto in 1957. By the mid-1960s, the developer had built more than 5,000 homes in Ottawa and expanded into the construction of rental apartments.

Near the end of the decade, Minto created what it claims was Ontario’s first condo project.

“It was a new form of housing and we took advantage of it immediately,” says Sherriff-Scott. “It was a good business opportunity because it enabled people to enter the home-ownership market at an earlier phase than they ordinarily would have.”

The company expanded to Florida in the late 1970s and went on to build thousands of single-family homes, condominiums and rental apartments in the Sunshine State. (It still maintains its Florida business.)

“We saw it as an interesting opportunity at the time, and it allowed for diversity in terms of the economics of land development and housing to have two operations that ran on different cycles,” Sherriff-Scott notes. “It has turned out to be a very successful operation.”

Minto entered the Toronto market in the mid-1980s with a pair of condo projects in Scarborough: Optima on the Park and Minto Plaza. “If we were going to expand in Canada, there didn’t seem to be any other logical place to go,” says Sherriff-Scott.

The company expanded its Toronto presence over the years, primarily through condo projects but also with single-family homes across the GTA.

It was as an early adopter of green-building practices. In the early 1990s, Minto’s Innova House, a prototype eco-home built in Kanata, served as a showcase for sustainable technologies such as solar power.

Minto became one of the province’s leading green developers, retro-fitting its entire rental apartment portfolio with energy-conserving features, such as low-flush toilets. “At one time, we were the largest purchaser of low-flush toilets in North America,” Sherriff-Scott says.

When Minto Midtown received LEED Gold certification in 2009 – making it the largest multi-residential building in the country to earn the designation – it represented the culmination of the company’s forward-thinking green strategy.

With a dedicated green division focused on carrying out its sustainable building strategy, Minto has vowed that all of its future condo buildings will meet the LEED standard, including eco-friendly features such as dual-flush toilets, all-off switches, heat recovery ventilators, rainwater harvesting and multi-chute recycling.

The company prides itself on being able to educate buyers on the virtues of green living.

“When customers ask, ‘Why should I pay more to have a sustainable building?’ our salespeople say, ‘Why would you want to move into a building that would be obsolete the day you took occupancy?’ ” Sherriff-Scott says.

“It’s going to cost less money to live in the suite – less on utilities and on maintenance fees,” he adds. “If you can make folks understand that it’s not only good for the environment, but it’s good for them personally, in terms of what they’re going to pay to live there, that resonates with them.”

“And if people can understand those benefits, then, as a company, you have a competitive advantage.”

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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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minto roehampton water collection

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