City
New in Toronto real estate: 365 Church Condos
365 Church Street is one of the most anticipated condo launches of 2013. So far. With a great plot of land at Church and Carlton, this project will surely seduce Ryerson students and/or those who hope to rent to Ryerson students. Rising nearly 30 storeys with a three-storey podium at its base, this building will offer all of those sweet, sweet condo extras, minus square footage in your suite. Here is a closer look at 365 Church Condos.
SPECS
Address: 365 Church St
Floors: 29
Total number of units: 359
Elevators: 3
Types of units: Studio, one bedroom, one-plus-den, two bedroom, three bedroom
Unit sizes (in square feet): 323 - 804
Ceiling heights: 8' and 9'
Prices from: $200,000
Parking: $50,000 (for select suites)
Maintenance fees: $0.55/s.f. +hydro
Developer: Menkes Developments
Architect: Wallman Architects
Amenities: Theatre room, rooftop terrace, party room, gym, yoga studio, reading room
Expected occupancy: Spring 2017
THE GOOD
Menkes should probably just call this one "INCOME PROPERTY!!!" because that's probably how most potential buyers will see it. 365 Church says 'student' all the way, with bitty 300-square-foot studios and a fantastic location that's just steps from Ryerson's campus. In terms of immediate vicinity, this spot can't be beat. Across the street from the Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws (where you can get a doctor's note, a mortgage, and a slab of parmesan all in one stop), this condo will have everything a September-to-May resident will need including coffee down the road, plenty of restaurants in the Village, late night cheap eats, and the College TTC station a few steps away. Granted, the rendering of the building isn't terribly inspired, but it's surely an improvement on the sad parking lot and low concrete shops currently occupying the designated space.
So, will 365 Church be the rich man's Neill-Wycik? Turns out he may not have to be so rich, after all (relatively speaking, of course). So-called "insider" pricing for a unit at 365 Church starts at an eyebrow-raising $575-ish per square foot, leading me to believe there must be a catch. A new condo priced as resale? Perhaps Menkes (rightfully) realizes that no one wants to spend upwards of $650 to $700 per square foot for a unit he or she is going to rent out to a rowdy group of urban planning students, with their mommies and daddies as co-signers. A parking spot will gouge you, of course, at $50,000 for a little concrete square, but for a slice of real estate that will seemingly always be in demand by post-secondary students, potential investors can surely do a lot worse. (See: CityPlace.)
THE BAD
What an adorable motel kitchenette. I bet you could really heat up some frozen entrées in that bad boy. This is surely compact living at its most exaggerated, with a 300-square-foot box presented as a complete living space. Mind you, that might be OK for a first-year dorm room, but these studios are built to include bathrooms, kitchen areas, and living and sleeping spaces. God help you if you want to move in a bookshelf or two. It also seems to me that Menkes missed an opportunity to incorporate more two- and three-bedroom units (aren't "family-sized condos" all the rage now?), especially since cohabitation-minded students will surely flock to this address. Nevertheless, I suspect many of those one-plus-den plans (especially where the dens come equipped with a door) will end up housing two students during the year.
But the high proportion of tenants over owners and fairly rapid turnover will surely take its toll on the integrity of the building. Literally and figuratively. This building will definitely see some in/out migration between school semesters, and I assume tenants won't be as gentle on common elements as might someone who is paying off a mortgage. And if I haven't already gotten the stereotype police on guard, I'll just say that I suspect Friday and Saturday night noise might be an issue. Rage on.
THE VERDICT
Better than Neill-Wycik.
What do you think? Would you live here? Add your comments to the thread below.
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Discussion
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Maybe, just maybe, if these kids (cannot call them young adults) become property owners they will learn how to be responsible adults.
This is the case for every area surrounding an institution as large as ryerson.
Yeah. Right. $5 a sf per month is what these will rent for.
What do you call a system that requires buildings to be largely pre-sold before they're built and not a single Torontonian can be found in the pre-sale meetings for "premier investors"?
That's not creating wealth... that's a bunch of guys at the top moving pennies around.
I agree it's terrible that they specifically target foreign investors for the pre-sales, so all the best units are bought up by foreigners. They should make rules to prevent that sort of thing, but everyone is making so much money off the system that way I guess no one cares.
When you only need to do 70% of something, everyone suffers and we've seen what happens when the pre-sale is more important than the construction or actual finished product. Pedestrians walking underneath these fortresses of dropping glass panes are acutely aware, in fact. It's no secret that the finished product suffers as soon as they get their requirement to build. There's no system of checks and balances in place to ensure that those buying after the pre-sale are protected like those scumbag international investors.
On the other hand, Ontario has some pretty terrific regulations and protections that other areas can only dream of. Did you know that in, say, New Jersey you can just make up how you count square footage? As long as you disclose it somewhere it's kosher. Ontario has strict rules for that sort of thing.
As for the falling-glass thing, this is hardly a Toronto issue. You just hear about it more in Toronto because there are more glass condos here. Everything falls off of buildings eventually, regardless of the material. New York City had so many bricks and bits of concrete and stone falling off of its buildings that they passed a law requiring buildings (6 stories and higher) to go through a very expensive physical check and repair of building facades on a cycle of every five years. This is why roughly 20% of all Manhattan sidewalks are always covered by some sort of sidewalk shed with scaffolding above. As Toronto becomes more of a high-rise city this sort of law will become inevitable here too.