Landscaping at 'The Summerhill' is by the creative CCxA and includes a horse statue.architectsAlliance
Joseph Notarfonzo has been cutting the hair of investment bankers, real estate moguls, creative types (such as this columnist), fellow Yonge Street retailers and office stiffs since 1961. If you were to ask, he’d likely be able to tell you how many times the floor tiles have been replaced at his little barbershop at 1204 Yonge St., or give you an accurate estimate how long a pair of shoes lasts for someone who spends all day on his feet. A good storyteller and a sharp wit, the octogenarian might also tell you he’s ready to retire.
But it’s not true, said Eve Lewis, CEO of Woodcliffe Landmark Properties: “Paul [Oberman] bought the building, and we’d always worked together, but I had never worked with the tenants, so I introduced myself to Joe and he said, ‘Well, you know, I am thinking of retiring’. That was 15 years ago,” she says with a laugh.
Like barbers or architects or artists, real estate developers never really retire. Had it not been for the 2011 plane crash that took his life, Mr. Oberman would be standing beside his wife, Ms. Lewis, at Yonge Street and Birch Avenue, admiring the enormous poster promoting “The Summerhill,” a boutique condominium that, once construction begins, might be the only thing to part Mr. Notarfonzo from his scissors.
For the company that gifted the city, in the first decade of this century, the restoration of Canadian-Pacific’s North Toronto Station (1915, now home to an LCBO) and the beloved shops known as “The Five Thieves” (1892) – both across the street and both sold in 2016 – it’s a fitting location for Woodcliffe to build again.
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But, unlike the slapdash condominium towers that dot the city, this one will be special, even on the outside, thanks to a shipload of Italian porcelain and architect Peter Clewes, who has “designed every single inch of this building,” said Ms. Lewis.
“We went to Modena, in Italy, with Peter in June,” said Woodcliffe VP of investments and corporate strategy Stratton Townley. “That’s where 90 per cent of Italian porcelain comes from. You go to these factories, and they show you not only the materials and how they manufacture it … but they also show you the mounting systems that they recommend.”
Mr. Clewes, principal/owner at architectsAlliance, could, at this stage of his career, pull a Frank Gehry and scribble a few things onto a cocktail napkin and let a gang of underlings decipher his chicken-scratches. But that, he said, would just add to the commodification that has plagued residential high-rise design for the past decade.
“It’s less about beautiful buildings and well-proportioned living spaces, and more about the number of investment units that can be packed into buildings with massing and program dictated by tall building guidelines,” said Mr. Clewes. “This project represents an opportunity to return to my roots as a designer, to create something compelling, beautiful, contextual … to think deeply about how the building meets grade, about materiality; above all else, about creating a beautiful place to live.”
Clad in that scrumptious imported porcelain intersected by bits of champagne-coloured metal and featuring acres and acres of glass, it will be beautiful indeed. Plus, with the heritage restoration of the stores along the Yonge Street sidewalk, the project possesses the same DNA as so many other Woodcliffe developments: “Paul loved retail restoration, office, more than he liked residential,” said Ms. Lewis.
“We’ve shifted our focus to mixed-use,” said Mr. Townley. “We still love doing office and retail, but we’ve added the residential component.”
At the sales office down the road, Brodie Townley of Market Vision fires up a full-wall video screen. With the push of a button, he can place potential owners on any of the building’s 33 storeys. On floors with only two units, he can demonstrate how one can, literally, trace the path of the sun.
“Do you love morning or evening light?” he asks as he dials up 6:50 a.m. in June. “This is on the 28th floor, and you can just feel the expansiveness of where our views in this building are protected.” Lower down, and North Toronto Station’s clock tower – inspired by the Campanile in St. Mark’s Square in Venice – seems so close one could reach out and touch it.
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Mr. Clewes’s sashless corner windows and staggered balconies, which eliminate that annoying roof overhead, means each unit enjoys a feast of sky, clouds, the trees of north Rosedale, and the mighty asphalt river of Yonge Street, which effortlessly divides the city into east and west.
“It was a real challenge to design that building because it has such a small floor plate,” said Ms. Lewis. “But the opportunities it created is that for 1,800 square feet, you can still have three sides of glass, which is unheard of.”
Interiors come courtesy of Brian Gluckstein, and, while minimal, landscaping is from the imaginative minds at Claude Cormier’s CCxA (the firm that gave Toronto the dog fountain and Berczy Park) and will feature a horse: “So, at [the grocery store] Harvest Wagon, there’s a wagon outside that Paul and I put there,” Ms. Lewis said with a smile. “So, this is the horse that got away from the wagon.”
And speaking of horses, the one Toronto rode during the condo boom has left the barn: the market has crashed and most developers have switched to building rental buildings. But Summerhill-Rosedale is a horse of a different colour and snack bracket, said Ms. Lewis: “The upper end of the market is a market that has the opportunity to be able to make choices for themselves, so our plan is that we could probably be under construction in 12 to 18 months.”
As to where all those movers and shakers are going to get a haircut, well, that’s another story.