Originally published in Green Street News
by Laura Hanrahan

The firm recently launched sales on a boutique ultra-luxury project

Despite a sluggish condominium sales market, Stafford Homes is betting big on
Toronto’s appetite for ultra-luxury living.

The Toronto-based developer recently launched 429 Walmer, a boutique 48-unit project in the city’s affluent Forest Hill neighbourhood. The development is catered towards well-heeled downsizers, with the smallest units well over 2,000
sq ft. And the amenities are more reminiscent of a resort – take the planned red light therapy room and a valet lounge where you can sip espresso while waiting for your car.

Green Street News caught up with Stafford president Jonathan Goldman to discuss why Toronto’s luxury condo market remains one of the sector’s few bright spots, how retail space can best serve residents, and what’s next for the firm’s growing pipeline.

With the Toronto condo market so stagnant, why build a luxury building?

We just had the busiest and most successful launch of any project in the city this year. Hundreds of people came out to the launch; we had a huge amount of registrations. Without making a comment on the general marketplace, which is
as slow as it’s been in all of our lifetimes, selling to an affluent, older demographic who want to move out of their homes they’ve been in for 30 years
and into a building that improves their lives, that has amenities that they’ve only dreamed of, this demographic is actually very much looking for large luxury condominiums.

Why go with 48 units rather than maximizing what could potentially be allowable on that site?

Because the buyer demographic for smaller units doesn’t exist right now in Toronto, and because we always intended to do a luxury building. I don’t create the demand, I don’t create what people like and what they don’t like, and the buyer who wants 3,000 sq ft does not want to live in a building with investors and small, tiny units that are being leased out on a short-term basis.

The buyers in these buildings are very specific. They like privacy and they like security and they like a heightened level of service.

What goes into a luxury condo building versus a traditional one, beyond just the higher-end finishes?

The entire building is different. The spaces are different, the structural engineering is different, the mechanical engineering is different. The nuances
and the design details go well beyond the materiality of the building. It’s a very long list, and it’s time-consuming and it’s costly. The volume of spaces in this building is better than any other project right now, period. And the amenities of
this building are unheard of – no one’s ever done this amount of amenities for 48 units in a boutique building in the history of Toronto.

How did you decide what amenities to offer?

We’ve canvassed the buyer demographic for years on this, and we have data as to when and how much all of the different amenities get used by the buyers. We study that information and do our best to create spaces that are gracious in
terms of scale.

We definitely do not want to just fill a building with as many different things we can put on a page as possible. We want the spaces to be elegant and usable, and, truthfully, a lot of the amenities in this building are pretty logical from a health and wellness standpoint. All of the facilities that we are putting into this project, whether it’s the gym, the private training rooms, the reformer studio, the
Pilates and yoga rooms, the beautiful Scandinavian saunas, the private steam rooms, the ice-bath rooms – we found that this is incredibly important to this buyer demographic.

We want to keep the cost of maintenance down, so we don’t do huge pools that consume tons of energy and take tons of time and cost to maintain. What we do are these beautiful current pools where you can swim against the current. It serves the same purpose, but it’s a better use of space.

Stafford often includes ground-level retail. Why did you opt for none at 429 Walmer?

We didn’t want anything to mess with the privacy of these residents. The entire building is completely free of any mixed use. It’s not on a main street either, so we didn’t see a soft-use space, such as a dentist, going in there. We wanted this to be the highest-end project that we’ve ever built, and privacy and security are key for us.

For projects that do include retail, what type are you typically targeting?

I like retail that adds a benefit to the residents above and that’s logical for that location. We have some pretty incredible retail going in a very exciting project that we’re doing right now in North York at 181 Sheppard Avenue East. We are building out a space for two Michelin star chefs – the chefs from Sushi Masaki Saito and chef Jackie Lin from Shoushin on Yonge Street. They’re building out
Canada’s first Japanese ultra-luxe marketplace, so when you walk in, you’re going to have Japanese burgers, Japanese soft serve, luxury grocery, and
we’re also going to add an Arabica, which is an amazing coffee brand.

We really love finding the right fit, and of course that’s impacted by the economy and what’s available, but most of our retail is thriving right now.

What has sales interest for 429 Walmer been like so far, and what path are you looking at for financing?

We opened last week, so we’re not far along in the process, but we’re surprised that we’ve already signed a number of deals, and we have a number of people who have reserved units that we’re working with right now. This is naturally a slower process when you’re selling ultra-luxury, large suites. People aren’t coming in and buying a unit within 10 minutes.

We’re looking at several different paths to financing. A lot of our big banking partners, who are the Tier 1 banks, have already been to the site and we’ve gone through the process. In the past, we’d wait a little longer to talk to the banks. Now, we’re having very early conversations, planning ahead, and picking and choosing our strategic financial partners. It’s a tough financial market, so I want to have longer conversations. Everything’s taking time these days – that’s the nature of being in this kind of economic time in the real estate industry, right?

How does purpose-built rental fit into Stafford’s development strategy?

We’re building a purpose-built rental building right now, a beautiful 12-storey, 160-unit building at 914 Bathurst Street in the Annex that’s financed, and we are currently doing the geothermal work on site. We have several other incredible high-rise sites that we are processing right now, one at 110 Adelaide Street, one on Berwick Avenue, and one at Yonge and Sheppard, and this would account for between 1,800 and 2,000 units. We are doing an evaluation right now, and I think they would all be perfect sites for purpose-built rental, but we are not confirming anything at the moment.

We’ve built a lot of it in the past, many years ago, under different economic programs. We hope that the government will support this in a significant way
and make them viable projects. There was a little bit of help for CMHC, and they’ve extended some monies to existing programs. We’re looking to
participate in any way. We want to support Toronto. We want to support Canada.

(Article may require a subscription to access.)