Several years ago, I paid a call on theatrical producer David Mirvish, son of Toronto entrepreneur Ed Mirvish, at his loft on King Street West. Mr. Mirvish was then using this industrial space, atop one of his enterprises, to display some of the large abstract paintings he had gathered during his years as one of Toronto's leading art dealers.
The canvases were interesting, but what really impressed me was the loft. It was the kind of place that artists and many other downtown-dwellers dream of having: vast, high-windowed, pleasantly stark, with tall brick walls that provide a handsome setting for the art of one's choice.
I asked Mr. Mirvish why he didn't live in this attractive spot. He simply smiled and gave a one-line reply that said it all: "My father worked all his life so that I wouldn't ever have to live over the store."
I am sure that many other children of successful immigrant parents would have answered my question in exactly the same way.
An artist’s rendering of Stephen Teeple’s plan for the Little Italy infill project, which includes a second-storey terrace garden with a full-sized tree. (TEEPLE ARCHITECTS INC.)
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Newcomers to Toronto's historic first-stop neighbourhoods, such as Kensington Market and Chinatown, have traditionally fled the narrow streets and small apartments above storefronts as soon as they were able. In recent years, exurban communities such as Markham (Chinese), Thornhill (Jewish) and Woodbridge (Italian) have become beneficiaries of this historic outbound trend. Nor are there many signs that the offspring of suburban affluence (apart from the occasional artist and bohemian) want to move down into the walk-up flats alongside many of Toronto's downtown streets.
But let's say a suitably glamorous residence above a shop came to market on College Street, on the vividly sociable strip of shops and restaurants that includes Little Italy. Would front-door access to vibrant street life and chic modernity be enough to lure a home buyer with a Forest Hill or Rosedale budget into the heart of an old immigrant neighbourhood?
In this regard, I will be interested to see how the real estate market treats the store and luxury flat (asking price: $3-million) that Toronto developer Jim Neilas is about to build on College Street a few blocks west of Little Italy.
Designed by Toronto architect Stephen Teeple, the building will be a gleaming slab of clean modernist geometry, about 18 feet wide, dropped into an old three-storey brick block of shops and apartments.
At the sidewalk level will be a 763-square-foot space, which is about the right size for a hair salon, shoe shop or some other little commercial tenant. (The stores, cafés and offices in this part of town are similarly small and stacked against each other chock-a-block, and their quick visual rhythm helps give College Street the sense of density and swing for which the neighbourhood is admired.)
If the first-storey store is just what you might expect in this jaunty, casual Toronto streetscape, the flat above is anything but.
The ultramodern apartment encloses almost 4,500 square feet of space, arrayed on three levels and stretching the whole distance between College Street and a rear laneway. It abuts the street with a shiny facade of silvery metal and a two-storey glass wall. In a gesture of dramatic contrast with the flat, loamy-brown brickwork on either side of his project, Mr. Teeple has created a terrace garden with a full-sized tree.
Walking upstairs from the College Street entrance — there is another access from a two-car garage at the back — the visitor enters a spacious living room that flows back from the terrace and College Street to a bedroom and study. The interior of the first level is arranged along the long axis, which is kept as free of obstructions as possible throughout its 115-foot extent.
On the next level up (connected by stairs and an elevator) is a second living room, the dining room and a long galley kitchen. These elements are displayed in one nearly uninterrupted movement from the treetop at the front to a cedar deck (with hot tub) overlooking the laneway.
About half of the top floor of this building of interlocking volumes — at the height of the roofs on either side, in other words — is devoted to a deck and garden. The other half is occupied by a free-standing enclosure, pulled smartly back from the street, that contains another small room and the master bedroom suite. Skylights and floor-to-ceiling glazing here and throughout the project opens the structure to all available light.
Mr. Teeple calls his building an "urban villa," and so it is: situated deep downtown in the bustle of urban life, abundantly luxurious but not condescending, adding a bright flash of sophistication to a well-rooted big-city neighbourhood. I suspect that even David Mirvish might be tempted to come back downtown by this beautiful example of living well over a store.
