The listing: 11 Brunel Court, Penthouse 2, Toronto
Asking price: $1,749,900
Taxes: $6,784.88 (2016)
Monthly maintenance fees: $1,198.36
Agent: Claudine Montano, ReMax Hallmark Montano Group Realty
The back story
Clayton Caverly and John Taylor were living in Vancouver in 2007 when they decided to trade their house and garden in the genteel Shaughnessy neighbourhood for a condo penthouse in a more urban setting.
But Mr. Caverly – a partner at a large Canadian law firm – was asked to return to the Toronto office.
Since the two had already decided they wanted to live atop a building in Vancouver, they decided to simply shift the plan to Toronto.
Mr. Caverly wanted to be able to walk to his Bay Street firm’s offices, so the couple started their search in the city core.
They were still on the West Coast when they chose Penthouse 2 from the developer’s plans for 11 Brunel Crt. Mr. Caverly says he was sold on the layout, which neatly separates the bedroom area from the main living areas in the 2,350-square-foot suite.
“It feels like a house in the sky, with a front garden and a side patio, a full laundry, and bedrooms off a private hall,” Mr. Caverly says.
The tower is part of the CityPlace development, which transformed the old railway lands into a high-rise neighbourhood just west of the Rogers Centre and north of the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Ontario.
The unit today
Mr. Caverly was returning to Ontario after 20 years away and Mr. Taylor had never lived in the province when they moved into the newly completed penthouse in 2008.
Mr. Taylor found a job as an English teacher at a high school in Scarborough and the two used their new setting as a jumping-off point for exploring downtown Toronto. “We really wanted it to be the most urban experience,” he says.
Forty-nine floors above the ground, the unit sits at the very top of the building, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows providing an outsize view of the CN Tower.
On one side of the foyer is the L-shaped main living area, with the kitchen at the centre and a separate den for reading and watching TV. The combined living and dining room has two sets of patio doors opening to a large terrace high above Spadina Avenue.
Another door beside the home office leads to a second balcony. Because the balcony is narrower than the terrace, Mr. Caverly has set up container gardens to provide a wall of greenery along the glass edge of the balcony. “It’s also a physical barrier so you’re not afraid to come out here.”
The kitchen has a granite-topped peninsula and stainless steel appliances. Some aspects of the kitchen didn’t turn out as the plans suggested so Mr. Caverly used his prowess as a litigator to press for additional upgrades from the developer.
Throughout the unit, the pair had a carpenter build modern shelves and cabinets for storage.
Mr. Taylor says the carpenter was an “old-world Portuguese craftsman” who wasn’t used to such spare design but worked meticulously to make the angles exact. When he was finished he did chin-ups to demonstrate how strongly the built-ins were anchored to the wall.
The windows provide a 270-degree panorama of Lake Ontario and the Toronto Islands to the south, the CN Tower to the east, and the city to the north and west.
“It’s like a light box,” Mr. Caverly says. “Every part of the condo looks out onto a terrace.”
A long hallway leads to a guest bedroom with a floor-to-ceiling view looking out to the gardens on the balcony. There’s a powder room in the hallway near the entrance and a full bathroom for the second bedroom. At the end of the hall stands a laundry room with built-in cabinets. The master bedroom has an ensuite bathroom.
Mr. Taylor and Mr. Caverly say they like the building for its youthful vibe and the location for its urbanity.
“There’s a young element in the building that I really love,” Mr. Taylor says.
The pair often walk to the foot of Spadina Avenue and take a water taxi over to the beaches lining the Toronto Islands.
About one year after arriving at Brunel Court, Mr. Caverly was elected to the condo’s board of directors. Over the years, he and the board used the substantial reserve fund to upgrade the common areas inside and the landscaping outside.
“We did a lot. We had the money in our budget,” says Mr. Caverly, who also gradually dispatched inefficient contractors and suppliers and struck more advantageous deals for the building.
Along the way, the retired lawyer earned the nickname “the Sultan of Brunel.”
Outside, the surrounding buildings of CityPlace have turned into a community, they add, with restaurants, pubs, grocery stores, coffee shops and a large park.
“That’s what we had anticipated here and it has happened,” Mr. Caverly says.
As for their next chapter, Mr. Caverly and Mr. Taylor hope to travel for a while, then move to a house they had built in a much wilder setting in Sechelt, on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. They’ve heard from family living in the area that a bear has taken to making regular visits to the property, so they’re already putting their mind to finding ways to discourage the gate-crasher before he’s deemed a nuisance.
They figure the hardest thing to get used to will be seeing blackness outside of their windows at night instead of watching the sun set and then seeing the entire city in lights.
“This has spoiled us because you always feel as if you’re in the middle of things,” Mr. Caverly says.
The best feature
The large terrace has room for a suite of furniture and large pots for container gardening. From above, Mr. Caverly and Mr. Taylor can watch the boat traffic in the harbour, with little clusters of white sails in the sailing school armadas and ferries criss-crossing between the Toronto Islands and the city.
From so high up, the couple say, they can watch thunderstorms or fireworks over the harbour during the summer. In winter, they’re awestruck by the swirling whiteness and flashes of lighting during blizzards.