Peter Freed, 38, is the king of Victoria Park.
Four years ago, when he staked his claim to the area around the small, historic Toronto park, near the intersection of King Street West and Bathurst Street, this shy, soft-spoken developer found it, for the most part, a shabby sprawl of old warehouses and industrial buildings. Since then, he has given the district the basic makings of a chic new residential quarter near the centre of downtown.
I caught up with him last week in his little office at 66 Portland St., his first project in the neighbourhood, where he also lives in a vast penthouse designed by Cecconi Simone.
"The first building we did certainly evolved into quite an adventure," Mr. Freed told me. "We started with a $25-million building, and now we're in the middle of $500-million in projects, so it's gone beyond what we originally hoped. I am personally excited about what I've done, but I feel like I'm really just getting started on the next 30 years of my career.
"I'm excited about the fact that I can now establish a track record that puts me in position to do more exciting things. It's all about enjoying what you do, being able to achieve your financial goals, putting yourself in a position to do stunning things. It's more than just looking at a balance sheet with a lot of zeros on it. It's about leaving a positive mark on the city."
So far, the design of Mr. Freed's buildings has been cautious, pitched to a mid-range market able to afford the area average of about $500 a square foot, with small units of 800 square feet selling at around $400,000.
But looking at his newest projects, you find that establishing an ever-stronger foothold in the neighbourhood is prompting Mr. Freed to loosen up on the design end.
Due for completion in the summer of 2009, the boutique hotel and high-end condo complex at 550 Wellington St. West, at Bathurst, designed by Toronto architect Peter Clewes, promises to be a sleek, urbane building with swing and verve. But the envelope will not be the only thing up-tempo about it.
The hotel will be run by a New York firm that caters, Mr. Freed said, "to the New York set, the Hollywood set, a lot of entertainment clientele, with exciting food and beverage services. They support a certain lifestyle. An old hotel, you know, has a lobby bar with one person at the bar, complaining about life. A lifestyle hotel today is just electric energy, people interacting, great music — a great experience, more alive. Toronto doesn't have a hotel like that yet." (On that point, I suspect the people over at the achingly stylish Drake Hotel might beg to differ.)
For a still newer mid-market condominium project, this time on the King Street edge of the Victoria Park district, Mr. Freed is running an architectural competition among well-known Toronto firms that specialize in modernist planning. (The list includes Rudy Wallman, Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg and core architects.)
"Architecturally, we're going to do something different," Mr. Freed said. "We have a heritage building, 160 years old, that we're going to preserve. We're going to complement that with contemporary architecture, a vibrant use of colour, to reflect the fashion district we're in the middle of. So I want to have some fun with the exterior design of the building and landscape treatments."
But Mr. Freed's biggest step forward in design refinement so far — and his boldest bid yet to attract high-end buyers into the Victoria Park area — will be the exclusive condominium building he is laying on a narrow mid-block strip of property that fronts on Wellington Street West.
Crafted by core architects, with interior appointments supplied by Diego Burdi and Paul Filek, the structure will face the street with an elegant stack of glass boxes framed by dark edges.
"I created this project out of a demand that I recognized in my other buildings. We sold about 25 units between $1-million and $2-million, but for every one that we sold, we could have sold a few more, if it had been a more exclusive building. People who were willing to spend that kind of money didn't want to be in a building with very small units and a lot of people. They were asking for a more exclusive setting, so that's why we are designing this one, to fill that void in the marketplace.
"In the last two weeks, we have sold $20-million worth of units and we didn't even have a model suite. We are designing this building with half- and full-floor residences only. There are only 17 units in the whole building — 2,500 square feet to 6,000 square feet — at starting prices from $1.5-million up to $5-million."
Mr. Freed believes that, in the long run, advanced condominium design will pay for itself — something Toronto developers, in his view, are just beginning to realize.
"Historically, developers pulled out design components in projects to improve their bottom-line profit, so the thought of developers investing in design is a relatively new concept in Toronto. Really only over the last couple of years have people started to invest time, energy and money in design. But as the market gets more competitive, some are going to be forced to do it. Some of us actually enjoy doing it. You always want to keep it exciting."
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