It would be easy to mistake the lobby of the One o One condos in midtown Toronto for a nightclub or graffiti-splashed alley. Instead of the muted colours and cookie-cutter designs that fill many condo buildings, developer Camrost Felcorp hired Toronto artist Anthony Ricciardi to create seven murals splattered with bright paint and a rainbow of drip marks. The flashy pieces put the building in a growing group of condo complexes whose hallways, lobbies and outdoor grounds are being... [read more]

Cumberland Terrace Tells The Story of Yorkville at a Glance. While most time capsules are buried in the foundations of buildings, their contents to be revealed at some future date, Cumberland Terrace is a living (if barely breathing) piece of Me Decade retail architecture frozen in time. Promoted as "the nicest way from Yonge to Bay" when it opened in October 1974, the mall's resistance to modernization - orange and brown tiles, large banks of phones, signage for... [read more]

TORONTO CONDO MARKET IS BOOMING ONCE AGAIN It Has Come Roaring Back to Life Builders were putting the finishing touches on nearly 10,400 new condo units in January, eight times more than the monthly average over the past decade, Bank of Montreal senior economist Sal Guatieri said in a report last week. The vast majority of the new condo units have already been sold. Still the influx of new units has helped push the number of unabsorbed condos - those that have been built but not sold... [read more]

HOW TALL CAN WE GROW? Yonge & Bloor Condos Break Barriers There's no denying that Toronto is a vertical city. Toronto has the second highest number of high-rises of any North American city and is building new towers faster than any other city in the western hemisphere. With dramatically increasing urban populations, and the commercial and infrastructure requirements that come with that, we need to build up in order to accommodate density. In response, Toronto real estate... [read more]

MALL WAR  How Redevelopment of the Former Hazelton Lanes Sparked a Poisonous Feud in Wealthy Yorkville The Great Battle of Yorkville broke out into active combat in the fall of 2014, when June Mitchell, an 86-year-old grandmother, staged a sit-in at a mall developer's office. It was nearing Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holiday, and Mitchell had a dinner planned. She had the food set and the timing down. Everything was ready to go. Until, all of a sudden, it wasn't. Eight... [read more]