New plan for Yonge & Bloor: Shorter tower, no hotel
By Megan O’Toole, National Post
The new condo tower set to rise at the famed One Bloor site will be shorter than the previous developer planned, but observers predict the demand will be high as buyers flock to secure a piece of one of Toronto’s hottest addresses.
Developer Great Gulf Group, which acquired the property at the corner of Yonge and Bloor streets after Bazis International failed to get its much-hyped 80-storey condo tower off the ground, officially closed the deal today.
Details of the building’s final design and pricing are still being hammered out, company president Jerry Patava said, but he confirmed the high-rise tower will be a mix of luxury condos and high-end retail space.
“It won’t be quite as tall as what was previously suggested for that site,” Mr. Patava said. “It will be a design that people will find very attractive and appealing... We want to have something that will be appropriate to that location and that’s really our goal, to create something that will fit in at Yonge and Bloor.”
The development will not have a hotel component, something Bazis had planned on including, and condos will be priced “to market,” Mr. Patava said, noting more details will be released in the fall as plans begin to crystallize.
Units in the original One Bloor building were going for between $400,000 and millions of dollars.
The Bazis project created mass hysteria in 2007 as people camped out for days outside the sales office, and even as prices soared, almost all of the units were sold. But after the failure of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, which was helping finance the project, Bazis, facing increasing pressures, sold the property to Great Gulf.
The bulldozed lot remains empty to this day, and Bazis buyers have started getting their deposits back — some for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Mitchell Cohen, whose Toronto-based real-estate company Urbanfund Corp. teamed up with its largest shareholder to acquire a one-third stake in the Great Gulf project, called it an “iconic corner” and expressed optimism at the site’s prospects.
“It is probably the best crossroads in Canada,” he said.
Garth Juriansz of Re/Max Realtron Realty said he sold more than 20 units at the original Bazis tower, even purchasing one himself. More than half of his clients have indicated they want to try again at the new building, he said, though the sales office will not be opening for awhile yet.
Despite the issues surrounding the Bazis project, Mr. Juriansz says he still expects the new condo tower to be massively popular, though perhaps not to the same fever pitch.
“I don’t think it will create less interest, but I don’t think you’re going to have the hype,” Mr. Juriansz said, noting Bazis developer Michael Gold was a “visionary” whose unique design created a “stampede” among buyers.
“My clients went crazy when they saw that design,” Mr. Juriansz said. “That was all part of the hype of Michael Gold. He created something spectacular that people just did not want to miss. They wanted to be part of it.
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