I stumbled upon this proposal for 996-998 Avenue Road after Chris Spoke stumbled upon it. It immediately stood out to me because it’s a site we looked at when it was for sale, and because it’s a handsome-looking proposal designed by Richard Wengle.
The minor variance application is for a new eight-storey building with 6 residential units, 1 surface visitor parking space, 6 long-term bicycle spaces, and 12 parking spaces in two underground levels (accessed via a parking elevator). This description alone should tell you the target audience, but here’s the typical floor plan:
The fact that this 2,790-square-foot plan only has two bedrooms tells you that this is geared toward wealthy empty-nesters (although the family room could very easily be converted to a third bedroom). So the project is effectively a stack of single-family houses, each with two parking spaces.
This is a segment of the Toronto condominium market that has proven to be the most resilient in the current environment, but who knows how deep that demand goes. Whatever the case, it does feel appropriate for this submarket.
I’m not suggesting that this kind of unit mix should be aspired to everywhere, but this overall scale of housing is something we should be replicating all across Toronto’s major streets and avenues.
That we’re starting to see more of it feels like a maturation of the Toronto market, or perhaps it’s just a sign that larger projects are significantly harder to underwrite today.