Eight years and three developers later, the
mid-rise that’s been haunting the corner of Queen and Pape, first as a hole, then as a shell, is finally entering the home stretch.
“We’ve registered with
Tarion and are waiting on Tarion approval,” says Norma Walton, president of the
Rose and Thistle Group, who bought the site and its partially built residential mid-rise last summer. “Then we’ll move in with our crew and go full-speed ahead.”
Walton expects to have everything she needs by the end of February.
It’s an odd situation. The extreme delays, caused partially by the recessions and partially, according to Walton, by two first-time developer partners who had a falling out, mean that the original sales agreements for the condos have all lapsed. Rose and Thistle are in the unusual position of finishing an unsold building.
But Walton doesn’t seem worried.
“It’s such a great location,” she says of the central Leslieville site. “Our view is, we’ll get them finished to the point where we have kitchens and hardwood floors for the purchasers to choose from, and once we have the units to the point where they can be walked, we’ll probably put them on MLS with our agents.”
The nine units on four storeys range from 550 square feet to about 1,000, with two ground-floor retail spaces at 800 and 900 square feet (along with 8 parking spaces).
Though relatively unknown in the residential sector, Rose and Thistle own between 45 and 50 commercial properties, including the old Corus space at 32 Atlantic in Liberty Village, which they renovated and now rent to ad firm Cossette.
But this isn’t their first foray into homes, either. They’ve done townhouses in Scarborough and, according to Walton, some condo conversions in Yorkville.
Though prices haven’t been set yet, Walton says “The neighbourhood seems to be supporting $550 a square foot up to $650, so it’ll probably bee in that range.”
She expects to finish the building in the next 18 months.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Norma Walton
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