Reina takes up a whole block and appears to touch the ground lightly, like a high heel.KG&A
In the booming, consumer-happy year of 1955, auto maker Dodge introduced the “La Femme,” billed as the “first and only car designed for Your Majesty, the modern American woman.” An option package offered on the Royal Lancer model, the La Femme came in one colour: pink, with interiors of pink jacquard fabric peppered with little rosebuds. For ease of driveability, everything that could be powered – steering, brakes, windows – was. And each purchaser was gifted with a lipstick case, cigarette lighter and case, compact, and a change purse. If that weren’t enough, Dodge threw in a raincoat, rain hat and umbrella that matched the car’s upholstery.
Sales were terrible. In an era when a popular model could sell in the hundreds of thousands, Dodge sold 1,500 La Femmes over two model years before quietly putting it out of its misery. Calling the move “pinkwashing” in a 2020 article for Hagerty, Benjamin Hunting wrote that “no amount of mansplaining its accessorized virtues via complementary advertising was enough” to “appeal to a woman’s wants and needs.”
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Thank goodness we’ve come a long way since then, or 689 The Queensway would be dressed in pink brick, come with preselected ‘feminine’ furniture, and have a beauty salon as an amenity. Likely Canada’s first condominium to be led, designed and engineered entirely by women, “Reina” doesn’t outwardly flaunt its femininity. Rather, it quietly reveals itself to be more sensitive to the needs of families, more thoughtful when it comes to storage, and feels a little safer in semipublic spaces.
The idea for Reina came from Taya Cook, executive vice-president at Urban Capital. She’d seen an article profiling some “condo kings” says architect Lisa Spensieri at BDP Quadrangle, “and she wanted to represent the women, so she had this idea that she pitched to Urban Capital.”
After the idea was accepted, Ms. Cook and Spotlight Development president Sherry Larjani assembled an all-woman consulting team, which quickly found kinship with Ms. Spensieri and Heather Rolleston at BDP Quadrangle: “They liked our ideas,” confirms Ms. Spensieri. “[The building] takes up a whole block, it’s a rather large massing, and one of the things we said was that we wanted the building to touch the ground lightly, like a high heel, and that really struck a chord with the client.”
But what should go inside? For that, the team took to the streets and held a community design workshop, which attracted almost 200 participants.
“What do we want this building to have – this community – because we really saw this as a community,” says Ms. Spensieri. “The event was a lot of fun, I sat at a table and asked questions, and we had sticky notes, and we got a lot of good information.”
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So, as built, Reina (Spanish for “Queen”) features larger-than-average units, a much higher percentage of two- and three-bedroom units, and, on the ground floor, three intergenerational units: “They’re bought as one unit, but there are two doors to the exterior and connected with one door on the interior … the second unit is smaller, but it has a bathroom and a kitchenette,” says Ms. Spensieri. “It’s good for when your kids are coming back from university and they have their own place next door.”
Amenities are family-focused as well: stroller-parking on residential floors; soundproof music rooms (for listening parties or if there’s a young clarinet player in the family); yoga room; crafting room; a glassed-in, daycare room to park toddlers with a picture book while mom uses the gym across the hall (with full view of her little one); a large dog-washing room; and, after a consultation with a group of Girl Guides, a “snack shack” equipped with a vending machine and tables.
The condo is well lit outside and it feels safe in semi-public spaces.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
There is ample exterior lighting for safety, and, behind the building, a gated, 6,500-square-foot garden with barbecues, benches, lounge chairs and a communal table. Out here, the U-shaped, curvy, white-brick building almost seems to give residents a reassuring hug.
“I was driving in the neighbourhood, and it was the tag line for this place that caught me,” says resident (and single mother of two teenage boys) Justine Nolasco. “‘Designed by women, developed by women, made for everyone’… but people think I live in an all-woman community,” she says with a laugh. “We’ve got families [and] we’ve got empty-nesters.”
And while Ms. Nolasco’s three-bedroom, two-bath unit is notable for its large kitchen, curved balcony, lovely herringbone floors and a good-sized primary bedroom with a walk-in closet, it’s the storage area around her upright laundry pair that gets her most excited.
“I call it my basement,” she says, opening the door. “This is amazing; the fact that some condos just have [space for the machines] and not the room on the sides. I put these [shelves] in, and I just throw everything in here. My kids will ask for something, and I’ll say: ‘It’s in the basement.’”
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“The units aren’t shoe boxes,” adds Ms. Spensieri. “We’re not struggling to find millimetres of space … we’re not fighting to cram one more unit in on the floor plan; it’s just about making the units better.” And because BDP Quadrangle used their in-house interiors team, amenities spaces are generous, logical and colourful.
And well used, says Ms. Nolasco: “When I bought this place, my youngest was eight, and then when we moved in he was 12 or 13 … but my teenagers use the gym in here, and they bring their friends all the time.”
A calm oasis on a busy thoroughfare – widened in the 1950s to make room for all those chrome-laden Dodges, Chevys and Fords – Reina is a game-changer that’s long overdue.