If Toronto’s residential development sector is on the verge of entering a post-pandemic era of optimism, Canderel’s large new project for St. Clair West looks to be part of that new vanguard.
On May 19 the developer announced the purchase of a 1.91-acre site at 490 St. Clair Ave. W. at Bathurst Street with plans to construct three residential towers, retail at grade, a new public park and a daycare.
The site is already zoned so permitting does not seem an issue at present, especially compared with this time a year ago when developers were facing early COVID permitting bottlenecks.
The vaccination numbers are looking better all the time, suggested Canderel COO Ben Rogowski, as is the overall Toronto housing market.
“We’ve just acquired the property so it hasn’t caused us any delays getting to this point,” Rogowski said of recent typical COVID concerns. “We certainly feel very optimistic of where we are with vaccinations and where our market is heading and there’s plenty of signs of life with recent condo launches that we’ve completed and that our peers in the industry have completed.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that we won’t suffer any delays or out-of-the-ordinary hurdles going forward.”
Canderel has momentum in Toronto with its St. Clair Village project, currently under construction at 900 St. Clair W.; the DNA project on King West; and the Residences of College Park at Bay and College, which includes a 1.9-acre park.
Rogowski said the new site is large enough that the developer can create its own community. It’s located adjacent to a major Loblaw’s supermarket and the St. Clair West subway station.
“We love the ability that this site offers to add to the existing community there,” he said. “The beauty of it is, with three towers and retail at grade and a park on site and other publicly accessible spaces on site, it gives us the ability to do more than just building one building and moving on to the next project.
“We’ve successfully been able to create communities and improve the local communities on some of our past projects, like what we achieved on the College Park block in Toronto, with four buildings that are multi-phase.”
Developing multiple residences also broadens the appeal to the marketplace, said Rogowski.
“One of the beauties of the project is having the scale to be able to offer to a wide range of buyers. I don’t think you can say this will be an investor building solely, it won’t be an end-user building solely, it won’t be big units only or small units only, it will really offer the full range of product that would be representative of what you’d expect to see in this location.”
KingSett Canadian Real Estate Income Fund LP will contribute debt financing to the project and BDP Quadrangle is involved in design.
With zoning in place, the next stage is plan approval.
If all goes well, Rogowski said, Canderel hopes to be in the market starting to sell units within a year. He said he would hope construction could begin within two years, but it is early to say.
“We continue to be extremely confident, not just in Toronto but with the Canadian landscape,” said Rogowski. “We pride ourselves on selecting what we believe are excellent, excellent properties to develop. We’re very excited about this one fitting that same mould, and we believe in the fundamentals of Canada and most specifically Toronto.”
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