According to a nifty chart over at the National Post that compares the city’s new crop of super-luxe hotel-slash-condo-towers—the Trump tower, the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons and the Shangri-La—it’s a tight race. While the Shangri-La earns points for scoring two Momofuku restaurants by New York chef David Chang, the Ritz-Carlton has high-definition televisions in the bathroom mirrors. Then again, a penthouse at the Four Seasons went for $28 million, more than twice the price of any suite in the other buildings. For our part, though, we give the prize to the Trump tower: as the tallest of the lot, it’ll have the largest impact on our city’s skyline. Trust the Donald to recognize that size matters. Read the entire story [National Post] »
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Which of Toronto’s opulent new hotels is the most over-the-top?
Rob Ford’s belly hits the big time (the New York Times Magazine, that is)
Forget transit turmoil and labour talks—the Toronto battle that’s gaining traction outside city limits is Rob Ford’s fight to drop a few pounds. In a bit titled “Belly to Belly With Bloomberg,” the New York Times Magazine observes that Ford’s attempt to goad Michael Bloomberg into losing weight makes no sense since the New York mayor still weighs what he did in college. Plus, just think how upset Doug Ford would be if his brother dumped him for a thinner, richer weight-loss buddy. Read the entire story [New York Times Magazine] »
(Images: Rob Ford, Christopher Drost; Michael Bloomberg, Center for American Progress)
Canadians invade New York’s real estate business with bags and bags of money
Two Canadian firms are mounting an invasion of Manhattan’s competitive commercial brokerage business. Toronto-based investment bank Brookfield Financial dangled seven-figure signing bonuses in front Eastern Consolidated’s Eric Anton and Ronald Solarz to lure the high-profile brokers into joining the team. Meanwhile, Avison Young, an independently owned brokerage also headquartered in Toronto, is working out of a temporary office at the Intercontinental Hotel on Park Avenue and already has Gregory Kraut, a former CBRE Group broker, on board. Word is Avison would like to hire some more big names—and may even be willing to cough up company equity to get them. New York’s real estate biz is known to be rather clubby, but it would seem Brookfield and Avison (and at least one other Canadian firm) have learned that the way into a city’s heart is through its wallet. Read the entire story [Wall Street Journal] »
Supermodel Coco Rocha is not anorexic, okay? She’s allegedly healthy—and beautiful
Coco Rocha (Image: Jason Hudson)
On Tuesday night, at the Bank of America Tower in New York City, supermodel Coco Rocha was a guest speaker at David B. Herzog’s event promoting the idea that “health is beauty.” Rocha and Doutzen Kroes got involved to illustrate the expectations of the fashion industry, which are notoriously unhealthy. Rocha says she felt pressure early in her career, claiming a modelling agent once said, “The look this year is anorexic. We don’t want you to be anorexic, just look it.” She was only 15. Kroes and Rocha are taking part in a Council of Fashion Designers of America-sponsored mentorship program in which seasoned models team up with younger models to help them along the way. We’re just wondering what world these people are living in, because industry standards haven’t changed that much at all (being skinny is still a model’s ticket to being a model—plus-size models, while championed by some, are still handpicked as novelties by international designers). Even the “designers, nutritionists and trainers” that Rocha alleges are around to “support the industry” are just a means to a skinny, preferably well-toned end. To think Coco Rocha used to be “fat.”
Battle of the department store windows: wherein Lady Gaga makes Christmas about Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga’s crystal cave—whatever that means (Image: Courtesy of Barney’s New York)
There’s so much to love about the holidays in a city: the aroma of freshly prepared seasonal drinks to get us going in the morning, hearing carols inside shops, fresh snow blanketing our favourite monuments and the many festive window displays at nearly every department store. Fashion magazine takes a look at the windows of popular department stores Holt Renfrew and The Bay and puts them side by side with Lady Gaga’s Barneys windows (which barely have anything to do with the holidays), Ogilvy’s woodland-themed tableaus, Bergdorf Goodman’s gaudy gilded birdcage and more. How do The Bay and Holt Renfrew’s efforts compare to the show-offs in New York? Take a look at the gallery and pick your favourite in Fashion’s poll »
Toronto art collector Ash Prakash triumphs in a bidding war at a Sotheby’s art auction
Ash Prakash expanded his art collection at Sotheby’s Canada’s live auction at the ROM Monday evening, scooping up a J.W. Morrice painting for a cool $1.5 million after apparently exchanging heated offers with Winnipeg-based gallerist David Loch, who has also been known to drop exorbitant sums of money in the Canadian art market. (Interesting aside: Loch is the former confidant of the late Kenneth Thomson, and Prakash is known to buy art on behalf of Kenneth’s son David.) Of course, Prakash wasn’t done there. He purchased two other Morrices the same night: a sketch called Venice for $82,000 and a garden scene for $232,500. These aren’t Prakash’s first major purchases. In 2008, he bought Tom Thomson’s Pine Trees at Sunset for a record $2 million. Thanks to Prakash’s buys and dozens more that day, the auction reported sales of nearly $8 million. If all this sounds a little excessive, rest assured that some 99-per-centers were also in attendance: demonstrators protested outside the ROM to support locked-out art handlers at Sotheby’s in New York City. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
Five things we learned about Viggo Mortensen (including how much he loves David Cronenberg)
Viggo Mortensen (Image: Ben Pruchnie/FilmMagic/Getty Images Entertainment)
Forget how little clothing you’ve seen Viggo Mortensen wearing (for a second), because he’s a person too. He “rang up” Vulture recently to discuss A Dangerous Method (he plays Freud—he jumped in when Christophe Waltz had to pull out), among other things, and here are five tidbits we took away (take note of how much he love, love, loves David Cronenberg):
1. He loves David Cronenberg
Mortensen believes that Cronenberg should have a movie out every year (he has, after all, been in three of them), but because his films are typically consumed on DVD, there’s usually a considerable gap between each picture. And for those wondering to how high a standard Morty holds Cronenberg: “Woody Allen is a great director, but I wouldn’t say that his track record over the last several years is as solid as David’s, in my opinion, and yet he gets to make a movie every year somehow.”
2. He isn’t naked in A Dangerous Method (sorry) Read the rest of this entry »
Morty says he smoked and ate until he developed Freud’s paunch (something he wryly points out took some hard work). We’d just like to point out to the Oscar people that Charlize Theron received an Oscar for eating Krispy Kreme donuts for her role in Monster (just saying).
Toronto Star makes real estate and numbers fun with an illustrated feature on city condo living
Toronto condo towers (Image: picturenarrative from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)
In a flurry of pie charts, bar graphs and cartoons this past weekend, the Toronto Star published its first instalment of Vertical Toronto, a visual series about condo life in the city. And, yes, we learned a thing or two. Turns out 60 per cent of Toronto households live in apartments—379,055 in high-rises, 205,825 closer to the ground. Remember when we reported that Toronto’s condo-building blitz is crushing New York City and Mexico City? The Star reveals the numbers behind completed condos: while T.O. (1,879) is far, far behind NYC (5,967), Hogtown is still ahead of every other city in North America. But the most interesting factoid comes from a sidebar about the sculptures outside city apartment towers: it seems developers aren’t actually enthused patrons of the arts. Section 37 of the Planning Act allows them to petition for a higher or denser build if they make a generous donation to a “community benefit,” like parks, community centres, heritage sites or public art installations. Since 1998, 130 works have been funded this way. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Blythe Wilson is leaving Toronto to star in a Broadway production of Mary Poppins
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Blythe Wilson will be saying farewell to the Princess of Wales Theatre. Wilson, who portrays Mrs. Banks in the stage production of Mary Poppins in Toronto, has been called to Broadway to take over the same role. Sadly, she’s the only performer from the 12-member cast who has been tapped, and at last Saturday’s opening night party, there were tears (some of joy and, presumably, some of jealousy—it is Broadway, after all) because she’s be leaving on Monday. (Her husband and fellow Mary Poppins castmate Mark Harapiak will stay behind). After cutting her teeth at both the Stratford and Shaw festivals, it’s about time she lived out her dream, and the dream of every actor who has ever struggled to make it big in Toronto. Well, she’s big, and now Broadway has her (at least for the time being).
Ontario developer risks $15 billion taking the lead in monumental Manhattan transformation
The Manhattan site where an Ontario developer is proposing to build 5,000 new apartments (Image: Roblawol)
Manhattan Island was long thought to be fully built out, but apparently Canada’s largest real estate developer aims to conjure an entire neighbourhood on top of a 26-acre rail yard nonetheless. Oxford Properties—the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System—has an ambitious vision of 5,000 new apartments, but it will first need to construct a $1.5 billion platform above the Hudson train yards in the island’s west end. It’s a Herculean task: New York City hasn’t seen such a transformation in over 100 years, when a similar platform was erected over Park Avenue and Grand Central Station. Oxford only took charge of the $15 billion project after some of the biggest names in U.S. real estate and finance pulled out, including Goldman Sachs and Tishman Speyer. The recession has bruised the American real estate sector to the degree that many companies can’t stomach the risk involved—especially since thousands of layoffs have left plenty of free office space in New York. The modest Canadians, however, still have the cash and cojones for such ventures. Construction starts next year, and hopefully the gamble pays off; the fund that sustains hundreds of thousands of Canadian pensions depends on Oxford’s success. Read the entire story [The Globe and Mail] »
Occupy Wall Street is given the boot; Rob Ford follows suit by serving Occupy Toronto an eviction notice
Eviction notice from the City of Toronto (Image: Kevin Hamilton)
The city said it would make its move on Occupy Toronto sometime this week, and Rob Ford offered yesterday that the protesters at St. James Park would be given notice “soon.” But with the PR motive for playing nice with the protesters essentially evaporated—after other Canadian cities cleared out their own Occupy movements and, most importantly, New York City forced Occupy Wall Street protesters out of Zuccotti Park early this morning—the city decided the time had arrived to serve Occupy Toronto with an eviction notice of its own. Back in New York, there are already reports that Wall Street protesters will be allowed back into the park (albeit without tents and their belongings). But we’re guessing the last thing Ford wants is for the Toronto eviction to be temporary. Follow Toronto Now for ongoing coverage [Toronto Star] »
Spotlight: Actress Blythe Wilson brings brassiness and a big voice to Mary Poppins at the Princess of Wales Theatre
In a world of instant stars and stunt casting, Blythe Wilson is a throwback to the brassy belters and hoofers of theatre’s golden era. Behind her polished, aristocratic veneer—all long limbs and stately grace—lies a big, show-stopping voice and an astonishing versatility. Wilson has been a stalwart in the Toronto scene for the better part of two decades, lending her substantial stage presence to several of the Broadway bel canto roles. She stole the show (from Colm Feore, no less) as hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Nancy in Stratford’s 2006 production of Oliver! The following season, she brought a rare depth to lovestruck farm girl Laurey Williams—a part not known for its complexity—in Oklahoma! She even vetoed a stand-in dancer for the show’s famous dream ballet, performing it herself.
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The Loaded List: we catalogue the astronomical salaries of Toronto’s ruling class
It’s not particularly polite to ask rich people what they earn. But tact is overrated, and we wanted to know, so we asked anyway. When they told us to get lost, we got sneaky. We dug up disclosure documents, annual reports and the tax filings of charitable organizations. When those trails went dry, we surveyed industry insiders who know what other people make—headhunters and consultants and analysts and colleagues—and asked for an educated guess. After hundreds of calls and emails and deep-throat meetings in dark alleys, we phoned the high earners back and told them what we found. Again, with feeling, they told us to piss off.
What follows is our shamelessly gawking, as-precise-as-possible examination of the highest-paid people in the city’s top industries. When the information was available, we included bonuses and perks and, in some cases, exercised stock options. Our findings verified that a high earner in finance is almost always on a different plane (a private jet, usually) than a high earner in, for example, the lowly arts. One major discovery: Heather Reisman took a pay cut. One truth reconfirmed: no matter how rich you are, there’s always someone who makes a helluva lot more.
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Destination Munkistan: A look at Peter Munk’s new Adriatic playground for the super-rich
The latest project of the gold magnate Peter Munk is a seaside resort and tax haven for fellow billionaires in the post-Soviet backwater of Tivat, Montenegro. A delirious tour of a world of champagne-drenched parties, supersize yachts and the recession-proof Ultra-High Net Worth Individual
Captain Fantastic: Peter Munk on his 40-metre yacht, the Golden Eagle, which has a full-time staff of five. (Image: Jim Ross)
There are birthday parties, and then there was Nathaniel Rothschild’s party this past July. The financier, scion of the prominent banking family and future baron was turning 40 and spent £1 million on the weekend-long extravaganza. The venue: Porto Montenegro, a newly developed luxury resort and marina in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat, on the southeast side of the Adriatic Sea. It was the sort of gathering that marks the end of an era or the birth of an empire—and in a way, for Europe’s youngest and smallest democracy, it was both.
Four hundred guests arrived at the village airport on private jets or stepped off the fleet of super-yachts that washed ashore from the world’s most glamorous tax havens—the Grenadines, Gibraltar, Grand Cayman. The attendees were described in the Guardian society pages as “200 ugly rich people and their poorer but more attractive partners,” or, as one guest more generously put it, “plutocrats and the women who love them.” A number of the partiers were so fantastically rich they could bankroll whole armies (which the birthday boy’s family, in its heyday, once did): Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (who arrived on his £70-million yacht, the Queen K); the wealthy Egyptian Sawiris family (who have embarked on their own Montenegrin development nearby); King Leruo Molotlegi, ruler of a tiny, platinum-rich part of South Africa, who hit the dance floor in a fabulous dashiki; British politician Lord Peter Mandelson; Jimmy Choo honcho Tamara Mellon; the historian Niall Ferguson and his Dutch-Somali partner, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist critic of Islam. There was a healthy smattering of European royalty, as well as members of the Guinness and Goldsmith clans.
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Former business associate of Kiss’s Gene Simmons is now collecting Toronto’s garbage
Kiss bass player Gene Simmons has made it into the coverage of Rob Ford’s push for garbage privatization (it’s about time, right?). Allow us to explain: the Globe and Mail has a story on the background of Green For Life Environmental, the firm that will now be hauling Toronto’s trash between Yonge Street and the Humber River. Apparently, company president Patrick Dovigi once sat on the board of “a YouTube music and celebrity channel fronted by Mr. Simmons” (it eventually company went bankrupt). The Globe also reports that Dovigi served as the president of Waste Excellence, a company embroiled in a dispute with the City of Vaughan over, among other things, bounced checks. (For his part, Dovigi says he left the company before the dispute.) And there’s more! GFL’s managing partner started his own trash collection company, landed a contract in New York, then threatened to stop serving unprofitable routes. Now, the Globe hasn’t unearthed a massive scandal—but there does appear to be reason for pause here. After all, Rob Ford has professed a rabid devotion to customer service. It seems that vetting GFL a little more closely might have been a good place to start. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
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