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ADDRESS: 8 Colborne St., Unit 2702
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Church-Yonge Corridor
AGENT: Corinne Pencer, Slavens and Associates
PRICE: $1,799,000
THE PLACE: A penthouse condo on the 27th floor of the Cosmopolitan, a boutique hotel that’s been singled out on the Condé Nast Traveler Hot List and comes equipped with a gym, business centre, spa and wine bar. Before going on the market as a condo, the penthouse was available for $3,500 a night.
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David Hockney’s Fresh Flowers exhibition has been touring Europe in advance of its only Canadian stop, at the ROM’s Institute for Contemporary Culture, and garnering a lot of hype along the lines of “74-year-old visionary explores cool new medium!” The show consists of hundreds of flower-themed still lifes done exclusively on iPads and iPhones. (Hockney added his own spin, saying that working with the Apple devices allows him to paint without the “mess”—which sounds as though he’s promoting a cleaning product.)
This could be seen as familiar territory for the British pop art pioneer. In the ’80s, his use of office-quality photocopies, fax machines and Polaroids put him at the forefront of art about the tension between original works and reproductions. The kind of heavy collage pieces he created by manipulating original work is now a regular sight in modern art galleries. (Today, the subject of reproduction couldn’t be more relevant to the copy-and-paste practices of young artists, though Hockney’s influence is cited far less often than you’d expect.)
Earlier this week, the Fort York Pedestrian and Cycle Bridge won a design award—which, of course, is somewhat awkward considering over half of city council voted to kill the project back in May. The jury for Toronto Urban Design Awards recognized the scrapped design in the Visions and Master Plans category. In particular, they applauded the bridge’s mandate: reconnecting a historical site that is “all but inaccessible” and “brutally isolated by transportation infrastructure.” Rob Ford called it “beautiful” when he sounded the death knell, but claimed that the city would have to “borrow $22.4 million” to construct it—although as we noted, the bridge had already been accounted for in the budget. We’d also like to inform the mayor that, as a pedestrian and cycling bridge, it is impossible for the gravy train to cross it. Read the entire story [Torontoist] »
Apparently there is something resembling a plan behind Doug Ford’s glorious vision for Toronto’s waterfront. The rumour bouncing around city hall all week—courtesy of the Toronto Star’s Royson James—was that one of the companies sniffing around the Port Lands is the Australian firm Westfield, Inc. The company owns several malls in Australia (although we wouldn’t necessarily call any of them “jaw-dropping,” which is exactly how Ford described the re-envisioned waterfront earlier this week), and it appears to be itching to get in on the action in Toronto. The full reveal is said to come during an executive committee meeting on Tuesday, but more details are starting to emerge in the meantime.
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Carolyn Chapman, who was an administrator at Upper Canada College for almost 25 years, and her husband, Patrick, bought their 25-acre farm near Creemore soon after they got married. Chapman had been longing for rural vistas like the ones she remembered from growing up on a sheep station in Australia. Their farmhouse, originally built in the 1880s, had a crumbling 1960s addition and became a decades-long work-in-progress. “Once, my husband and I were having tea with a friend, and we mentioned that we’d been meaning to knock down one of our living room walls,” Chapman says. “Our friend said, ‘There’s no time like the present.’ So we picked up some hammers, and that wall went out the window.”
Pamela Anderson: designer? (Image: Hartmut Tobfeld)
• Pamela Anderson designs range of couture stockings [Daily Mail]
ADDRESS: 66 Russell Hill Road
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Casa Loma
AGENT: Jonathan Ferrier and Elli Davis, Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Brokerage
PRICE: $4,500,000
THE PLACE: Nestled at the bottom of Russell Hill Road and flanked by Sir Winston Churchill Park and Roycroft Park, this house provides the best in stately castle (there is a turret covered in vines, after all) that Toronto has to offer this side of Casa Loma.
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Karen Troubetzkoy and Derek Schreyer met at film school in Vancouver more than 15 years ago and have been romantically and professionally inseparable ever since. Nine years ago, they bought a 1940s two-storey home in Little Italy—their first house. It was stumbling distance from Café Diplomatico, Schreyer’s favourite hangout, and a bargain because it had been slow to sell.
ADDRESS: 118 Parkview Hills Crescent
NEIGHBOURHOOD: O’Connor-Parkview
AGENT: Raza Haider Naqi, Re/Max Vision Realty Inc., Brokerage.
PRICE: $1,749,000
THE PLACE: Designed by Toronto-based sustainable design firm Urbaneco, this open-concept home is the ultimate in eco-friendly modernism. Twelve-foot glass walls in the kitchen and living rooms retract to seamlessly integrate the interior living space with the professionally landscaped backyard, while the master bathroom overlooks the Don River ravine, creating the feeling of a pastoral oasis within the busy urban environment.
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Purple Reign
Not quite a hat and not quite a hair clip, the fascinator is spring’s most regal fashion statement, thanks in large part to England’s newest princess-to-be, who is often photographed with one perched atop her head. At Lilliput Hats on College Street, requests for fascinators have doubled since the royal engagement was announced in November. And unlike china or mouse pads emblazoned with the royal couple’s heads, this is the kind of matrimonial hysteria we can get behind—if only for the opportunity to play dress-up with coquettish netting and decorative feathers. $70. Lilliput Hats, 462 College St., 416-536-5933.
T.O. is the second best (Image: Anonymous)
U.S. firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has released a list of the world’s best cities, in which “best” is defined by a high score on an index that’s intended to highlight “cities of opportunity.” That New York City took the top spot is no surprise—they did, um, pay for the study—but we’re a little bit tickled that Toronto came in a close second, despite what the report calls its “beta city” status, which, apparently, means that it isn’t “part of the conversation with London, Paris and New York.”
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ADDRESS: 6 Shannon Street
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Palmerston–Little Italy
AGENT: Michael Camber, Bosley Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage
PRICE: $799,000
THE PLACE: Inside and out, this two-bedroom, three-bathroom row house in one of the Toronto’s hottest neighborhoods is the ideal home for a new family or a pair of up-and-coming young professionals. After a complete gutting and full-scale renovation in 2007, the house looks and feels brand new while still fitting into its traditional Victorian neighbourhood.
BRAGGING RIGHTS: The bright blue paint job, slatted wood detailing and manicured landscaping exude the kind of curbside charm that will make your neighbours wonder who the architect was.
BIG SELLING POINT: The backyard. Complete with integrated automated lighting, a bubble-rock fountain, two separate sitting areas—one with Nova Scotia slate—and a custom-designed garden by Mark Cullen, it’s the kind of space that makes any of the local patios seem completely redundant.
POSSIBLE DEAL BREAKER: The busy, fun-filled locale isn’t for everybody. The house is an urban oasis in so many ways—but the nearby College, Dundas and Ossington strips don’t exactly promise quiet, restful nights.
BY THE NUMBERS:
• $4,095 in taxes
• 3 bathrooms
• 2 bedrooms
• 2 backyard sitting areas
• 1 ensuite study
• 1 private front balcony
• 1 bubble-rock fountain
Entering through the front hall of Noah and Erica Godfrey’s Forest Hill home often means dodging bowling tournaments or miniature car races. Four-year-old Chase and two-year-old Lincoln have left their mark all over the house—and that’s exactly how the Godfreys want it.
Victor’s new semi-private dining room
With upscale bars and restaurants popping up in new hotels in and around King West, Victor, an operation that staked an early claim to the area, has given itself a makeover. Long-time general manager Michael Sullivan and chef David Chrystian recently stepped in as the new owners of the restaurant, located in the Hôtel Le Germain, and have relaunched it with a new menu and a contemporary facelift by Jenny Francis Design.
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