You'd be forgiven for not noticing the coolest new condo
development in recent times just admitted its first new owners last month. The
address is 155 Cumberland, just east of the Cumberland Four cinema, though people
who live there can also get home through a very non-condo-like door at 130
Bloor Street West. If you want to see it, stand in front of Gucci or Herm�s
(also at 130 Bloor) and look up, look way up.
For the past year or so, cranes have been adding storeys to
the top of what has for decades looked like an office building (designed by
Bregman + Hamann Architects). And for decades, it's mostly been an office
building, with "mostly" being the operative term, because for those same
decades, since 1961 in fact, there's been a two-storey apartment on top, on the
13th and 14th floors. It was built for and occupied
exclusively by the late Noah and Rose Torno, who'd made their money as
developers (and one of the few places in Toronto designed by famed architect Phillip Johnson).
Nine years ago, Jon Love, whose own family made their money
running the publicly held Oxford Properties Group (which in fact once owned the
building), decided that one perfect urban apartment might be profitably
transformed into 15.
Along with Quadrangle architect Brian Curtner, a team
consisting of Love's KingSett Capital and builder Joe Brennan put together
Toronto's only equivalent to 740 Park Avenue, home at various times to Edgar
Bronfman Sr. (and old friend of the Tornos), John D. Rockefeller and a few
Chryslers, and dubbed by author Michael Gross "the world's richest apartment
building," where units have been listed recently for as much as $75 million.
Early rumours have the highest asking price at 155
Cumberland closer to $25 million. Most of the units, which range between about
4,500 and 6,000 square feet, sold in the low- to middle seven-figure range. But
like 740 Park, this building's biggest asset to its owners is its discretion.
You have to know it's there to know it's there, and you have to know who lives
there to know who lives there. Love has come clean to say he does, and Brennan
bought a place (though whether he's going to live there is another question).
As for the others, it's anyone's guess.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: emporis.com