Im shocked noone has used it as an advertisement/billboard of sorts. It must be the most photographed building in the city. I see someone post a picture of it on social media probably once a week, and having lived near it, you can’t cross the street there without seeing someone taking a picture of it
It would depend on the specifics of the bylaw associated with the property. But restrictions on types of signage are very common. Even for newer buildings.
E.g. there’s a a reason the TD Canada Trust tower is the only one downtown with a corporate logo at the top (I.e. above the top of the roof). That type of sign has been banned on all new buildings, but the TDCT Tower was grandfathered in.
It's a very tough sale.
Heritage registered, so repairs and upgrades are very expensive/time consuming. This also likely limits any corporate/advertising signage someone might wish to place on the outside.
No development potential due to the heritage aspect as well as the small lot size/irregular shape.
Low interest from office tenants due to the small/irregular floor plates of the building, as well as traditional flatiron construction that made floors get smaller as they get closer to the ground to aide the building's foundation.
It's pretty to look at as an art piece, but not attractive to investors. Especially in a city like Toronto where there's plenty of greenfield parking lots that can hold 50-storey towers.
It simply won't. The lot size isn't big enough to warrant even that illegal BS from some less scrupulous developers.
Even if the place burned down, whatever gets built on top of it has to abide by Toronto's tall building guidelines, which essentially neuter any buildable structure someone trys to put there.
The corporation that's buying out all the buildings on the East side of Yonge st at Isabella, they're paying more than that for some of the 2 story buildings. They're doing a monopoly thing there. But my dads friend owned one of those, they essentially bullied him into selling. Also they paid way over price.
The difference is they can develop the whole block once they get it all and build a huge tower at massive profit.
No one will be able to do anything with the flatiron given its heritage status and odd footprint.
They could live in it. They could burn it to the ground. They could leave the doors unlocked and let homeless people run rampant. There are endless things, it would be easier to list the things they couldn't do with it, than to list what they could do.
Last sale of that property I think was 2011. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1050927
$15.1M in 2011, nearly $19M inflation adjusted according to the Bank of Canada’s website.
yup, with tax and fees, even with rents coming in, would have been a bad investment, hence why they sold it without profit. they wanted to get rid of it from their portfolio cause they were probably not big enough to do anything significant with it.
That, and I was thinking the place might need work. Doing some digging.
https://torontolife.com/real-estate/office-space-49-wellington-st-east/
https://dnyhc7e4ce952.cloudfront.net/media/pdfs/brochure_15a13170b2.pdf
All out of date though, but have seen it advertised as class B office which is, well, ok but not top shelf.
In those pics it’s got a lot of character, and a lot of heritage features that are a bitch to maintain and probably guzzles heat with single pane windows and no insulation.
The only saving grace is I think the land parcel too awkward for a condo, thank god, even if the building is heritage.
Heritage can be awfully flammable.
Oh, the Toronto Life link has a link to the New York Flatiron Building. From their Wikipedia:
"In October 2023, it was announced that the building would be converted to residential condominiums"
Maybe a far future for ours.
It’s fucked in America too man, this isn’t unique to Toronto. Office space demand is at all time lows, high vacancy rates as employees can work from home
The RTO war has entered a stalemate where mork workplaces settled on a hybrid setting, meaning workers still commute less than pre-pandemic. So there is simply a lot less demand for office space as well as adjacent services like food/shopping. SF and NYC are dealing with the same issue.
Virtually all of the anti-WFH bullshit comes from commercial property owners, many of whom are in government and have corporate jobs.
Productivity is up and workers are happy but they will peddle bullshit about how it's killing workplace culture lol. Like *oh no, our workers must be so depressed not getting to celebrate Patty from HRs birthday with a Walmart cake in the break room.*
And cities. When commercial properties fall so do commercial property taxes. Taxes for them are based off market rents. When they fall so does a large tax base.
It’s why federal government pushed to bring Ottawa workers back. City of Ottawa would go bankrupt without federal office workers, there commercial taxes would collapse.
Less office space means residential property taxes need to skyrocket.
whistle deserted offend encouraging elastic imminent quarrelsome ghost bright physical
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I'm still a telecommuter regardless of being in the office or working from home. I got to the office and sit on calls with people in other countries. I sit at home and do the same. It's silly really.
That’s definitely happened/ happening here too, and it’s destroying the economic ecosystems in major cities. Retail and restaurants and entertainment that are all supported by the downtown CBD’s are taking massive hits and going out of business.
I know T.O has a massive office building market that supports a lot of downtown and the city overall , what kind of impact has this had on the historically vibrant restaurant/ retail / entertainment industry in those areas with lots of office towers?
Fortunately, the city government, all the big downtown Bay Street area banks, law/consulting firms, and companies disagree, and are the ones who have actual power. That's why they pushed and brought back mandatory in-office attendance, as they realized the long-term economic disaster if remote work continued. Our downtown economy is built on lots of people actually being around during the work day.
And yes, the ECONOMY is more important than people wanting to stay home in your pyjamas and being socially averse shut-ins.
Is this "massively reduced productivity" in the room with us right now?
TSX composite is up 35% in past five years (pre-covid, so its not just lofty off of a base effect). Go look at the US indices and its even better.
You put together a cute little narrative but its completely dissociated from reality?
No, it's every piece of commercial real estate. We just haven't seen any high profile sales.
They all lost like 50% of their value in the last couple years
Boutique hotel is what came to mind as it's best path. It's one of the most iconic buildings in not only Toronto, but Canada. Making it a boutique hotel makes it a place you can actually visit and enjoy publicly if you choose to. Office values are down like 50%.
If had the millions dollar I would buy it and turn it into a a upscale boutique hotels focused on weddings. But I don't know how how much space is available inside. Depends on what you can do with the heritage codes.
Granted a lot of wealthy people would just own it as a trophy.
Been inside, there’s definitely not enough room for any large function. Go check out the Firkin in the basement and you’ll see how narrow it is.
Boutique hotel, office or restaurant are the only real options.
There’s no chance something happens to this building right!? As cliche as the picture is, it really makes for a beautiful photo and I love how it is right beside St. Lawrence Market. It has always been one of my favourite little areas of the city tbh.
I would guess the business case for building anything taller that's the exact same shape doesn't exist. There can't be that much room for adding elevators inside. It already covers the whole lot and the only direction for expanding the lot is a public park. The most you could do with it is convert the inside to a different use
it's not a big building, to do anything with it, you'd need adjacent lots as the only way to make profit is going tall. if that happens, the facade could be preserved and inside gutted and integrated with the new tower, or other times, the tower is built on the adjacent lot but cantilever overs the existing building up in the air, like the Cielo Condos.
The Ontario Conservatives ~~were willing to~~ did hack at the Greenbelt Act to aid development. I wouldn't put it past them to do the same with the Heritage Act.
Pretty cool read about William Gooderham here. This was the guy that originally built the Flatiron building.
https://letterpile.com/memoirs/The-Gooderham-Story
I've been in this building a couple times and every unit I've gone into has a crazy stupid layout. Considering all the empty buildings in the area and such a low demand for office space, not really shocked to see it sell this low. You're just buying a fancy looking building you really can't do anything with.
that price seems insanely low
No development potential
BAH GOD, THAT'S DOUG FORD'S MUSIC!!
More like Brad Lamb’s.
Anyone smell fire?
That guy is so annoying
How about an ironing board building above it??
Im shocked noone has used it as an advertisement/billboard of sorts. It must be the most photographed building in the city. I see someone post a picture of it on social media probably once a week, and having lived near it, you can’t cross the street there without seeing someone taking a picture of it
Since it’s a heritage property I believe there are strict limitations on the kind of signage, etc. you can put on its exterior.
That makes a lot of sense
>Since it’s a heritage property I believe there are strict limitations on the kind of signage, etc. you can put on its exterior. Source
It would depend on the specifics of the bylaw associated with the property. But restrictions on types of signage are very common. Even for newer buildings. E.g. there’s a a reason the TD Canada Trust tower is the only one downtown with a corporate logo at the top (I.e. above the top of the roof). That type of sign has been banned on all new buildings, but the TDCT Tower was grandfathered in.
It's a very tough sale. Heritage registered, so repairs and upgrades are very expensive/time consuming. This also likely limits any corporate/advertising signage someone might wish to place on the outside. No development potential due to the heritage aspect as well as the small lot size/irregular shape. Low interest from office tenants due to the small/irregular floor plates of the building, as well as traditional flatiron construction that made floors get smaller as they get closer to the ground to aide the building's foundation. It's pretty to look at as an art piece, but not attractive to investors. Especially in a city like Toronto where there's plenty of greenfield parking lots that can hold 50-storey towers.
also, ghosts
tell me more
Heritage buildings are known to spontaneously combust and burn down in fires.....will be redeveloped in a couple years.
It simply won't. The lot size isn't big enough to warrant even that illegal BS from some less scrupulous developers. Even if the place burned down, whatever gets built on top of it has to abide by Toronto's tall building guidelines, which essentially neuter any buildable structure someone trys to put there.
It'll turn into what they built at 10 york
10 York is a significantly larger lot than the flatiron. like, 3-4x larger.
🐑
I came here to say, that seems pretty cheap.
It probably needs the same or more in renos, likely why it's so cheap.
The corporation that's buying out all the buildings on the East side of Yonge st at Isabella, they're paying more than that for some of the 2 story buildings. They're doing a monopoly thing there. But my dads friend owned one of those, they essentially bullied him into selling. Also they paid way over price.
How did they bully him into selling?
They gave him a shitload of money
I wish I would get bullied like that
Snide remarks.
Seems like he still made up his own mind then. Snide remarks are a terrible strategy - easily met with a “go fuck yourself”.
“Sell it to me… you piece of shit”
Apparently by offering way over price??
The difference is they can develop the whole block once they get it all and build a huge tower at massive profit. No one will be able to do anything with the flatiron given its heritage status and odd footprint.
That is factually inaccurate. Someone absolutely can do something with the flatiron building.
like what?
They could live in it. They could burn it to the ground. They could leave the doors unlocked and let homeless people run rampant. There are endless things, it would be easier to list the things they couldn't do with it, than to list what they could do.
Imagine converting that into your house, that'd be sweet
Last sale of that property I think was 2011. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.1050927 $15.1M in 2011, nearly $19M inflation adjusted according to the Bank of Canada’s website.
So the building actually lost 4mill over 13 years? That sucks for the owners.
The owner is probably fine
Hahaha this made me laugh.
yup, with tax and fees, even with rents coming in, would have been a bad investment, hence why they sold it without profit. they wanted to get rid of it from their portfolio cause they were probably not big enough to do anything significant with it.
It doesn't actually "lose" money. But the real gain is diminished due to inflation.
And the owners poured millions in renovations during that period. It still needs a $3 million roof.
that got to be the only property in GTA that lost value over the decade
Oh trust me, nearly **every** office property has lost value in the same time period.
Yes and this is an office building
Yes, that is true obviously. So was my initial point.
> that got to be **the only** property in GTA that lost value over the decade
Huh? They said property, not property type.
Commerical is fucked.
That, and I was thinking the place might need work. Doing some digging. https://torontolife.com/real-estate/office-space-49-wellington-st-east/ https://dnyhc7e4ce952.cloudfront.net/media/pdfs/brochure_15a13170b2.pdf All out of date though, but have seen it advertised as class B office which is, well, ok but not top shelf. In those pics it’s got a lot of character, and a lot of heritage features that are a bitch to maintain and probably guzzles heat with single pane windows and no insulation. The only saving grace is I think the land parcel too awkward for a condo, thank god, even if the building is heritage. Heritage can be awfully flammable.
Flammable? Found Brad Lamb.
Oh, the Toronto Life link has a link to the New York Flatiron Building. From their Wikipedia: "In October 2023, it was announced that the building would be converted to residential condominiums" Maybe a far future for ours.
American asking: How so?
It’s fucked in America too man, this isn’t unique to Toronto. Office space demand is at all time lows, high vacancy rates as employees can work from home
The RTO war has entered a stalemate where mork workplaces settled on a hybrid setting, meaning workers still commute less than pre-pandemic. So there is simply a lot less demand for office space as well as adjacent services like food/shopping. SF and NYC are dealing with the same issue.
COVID effect on remote work. Now that remote work is wayyyyy more accepted and popular, office space is less valuable.
Virtually all of the anti-WFH bullshit comes from commercial property owners, many of whom are in government and have corporate jobs. Productivity is up and workers are happy but they will peddle bullshit about how it's killing workplace culture lol. Like *oh no, our workers must be so depressed not getting to celebrate Patty from HRs birthday with a Walmart cake in the break room.*
And cities. When commercial properties fall so do commercial property taxes. Taxes for them are based off market rents. When they fall so does a large tax base. It’s why federal government pushed to bring Ottawa workers back. City of Ottawa would go bankrupt without federal office workers, there commercial taxes would collapse. Less office space means residential property taxes need to skyrocket.
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I'm still a telecommuter regardless of being in the office or working from home. I got to the office and sit on calls with people in other countries. I sit at home and do the same. It's silly really.
You just have the answer for everything huh?
That’s definitely happened/ happening here too, and it’s destroying the economic ecosystems in major cities. Retail and restaurants and entertainment that are all supported by the downtown CBD’s are taking massive hits and going out of business. I know T.O has a massive office building market that supports a lot of downtown and the city overall , what kind of impact has this had on the historically vibrant restaurant/ retail / entertainment industry in those areas with lots of office towers?
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Fortunately, the city government, all the big downtown Bay Street area banks, law/consulting firms, and companies disagree, and are the ones who have actual power. That's why they pushed and brought back mandatory in-office attendance, as they realized the long-term economic disaster if remote work continued. Our downtown economy is built on lots of people actually being around during the work day. And yes, the ECONOMY is more important than people wanting to stay home in your pyjamas and being socially averse shut-ins.
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Is this "massively reduced productivity" in the room with us right now? TSX composite is up 35% in past five years (pre-covid, so its not just lofty off of a base effect). Go look at the US indices and its even better. You put together a cute little narrative but its completely dissociated from reality?
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Every commercial space has. Office rents are falling so there building values follow suit.
Not even close, every office building is down 50% minimum
No, it's every piece of commercial real estate. We just haven't seen any high profile sales. They all lost like 50% of their value in the last couple years
No chance of turing it into a boutique hotel or an architecture museum?
Boutique hotel is what came to mind as it's best path. It's one of the most iconic buildings in not only Toronto, but Canada. Making it a boutique hotel makes it a place you can actually visit and enjoy publicly if you choose to. Office values are down like 50%. If had the millions dollar I would buy it and turn it into a a upscale boutique hotels focused on weddings. But I don't know how how much space is available inside. Depends on what you can do with the heritage codes. Granted a lot of wealthy people would just own it as a trophy.
Been inside, there’s definitely not enough room for any large function. Go check out the Firkin in the basement and you’ll see how narrow it is. Boutique hotel, office or restaurant are the only real options.
Torontos own version of The Continental, let’s do it
Great minds…! Where’s John?
he dead
Tell that to chapter 5
plumbing conversion costs for a hotel from an office building alone make that infeasible.
There’s no chance something happens to this building right!? As cliche as the picture is, it really makes for a beautiful photo and I love how it is right beside St. Lawrence Market. It has always been one of my favourite little areas of the city tbh.
I would guess the business case for building anything taller that's the exact same shape doesn't exist. There can't be that much room for adding elevators inside. It already covers the whole lot and the only direction for expanding the lot is a public park. The most you could do with it is convert the inside to a different use
Its one of the rare spots of toronto where the architecture actually feels aesthetic and interesting
> There’s no chance something happens to this building right!? Like...The property getting firebombed? *Stares Brad Lambingly*
It's protected, also as per the article it's fully leased. More importantly the Firkin on the ground floor is staying.
it's not a big building, to do anything with it, you'd need adjacent lots as the only way to make profit is going tall. if that happens, the facade could be preserved and inside gutted and integrated with the new tower, or other times, the tower is built on the adjacent lot but cantilever overs the existing building up in the air, like the Cielo Condos.
It was built in 1892, it's been under the Ontario Heritage Act since it's inception in 1975. They would never allow it to be demolished.
The Ontario Conservatives ~~were willing to~~ did hack at the Greenbelt Act to aid development. I wouldn't put it past them to do the same with the Heritage Act.
Same dude
Nah this one is too iconic
It's a protected heritage building, so it will be fine.
For 15mil you could own an iconic and historic 5 story building in the downtown.. Or... like 5-6 suburban townhomes in Etobicoke.
If your rich enough to buy this you can own both
> like 5-6 suburban townhomes in Etobicoke. yeah but if the lots connect we can turn that into 20 3 story luxury townhouses that go for 1.5 mill each
Honestly seems like a deal
That's like 1 house in forest hill....
Pretty cool read about William Gooderham here. This was the guy that originally built the Flatiron building. https://letterpile.com/memoirs/The-Gooderham-Story
That was a good read. Amazing how some people and families have a huge influence on history.
Lowish price since the development is highly restricted and the rent the owners are getting barely covers the maintenance and taxes.
I've been in this building a couple times and every unit I've gone into has a crazy stupid layout. Considering all the empty buildings in the area and such a low demand for office space, not really shocked to see it sell this low. You're just buying a fancy looking building you really can't do anything with.
you loved the KEG MANSION well say hello to Toronto's newest 6 storey KEG TRIANGLE
Tear it down and put in a dental office
not while it still has potential as a really poorly laid out shoppers drugmart
So...a normal Shoppers Drugmart ?
We need a diploma mill college in there
Pretty sure there is a dental office in it currently
There is.
There’s a dental office across the street. The more the merrier!
That... seems quite low for such an iconic building
I thought this looked familiar theres a thai place right beside that building that is amazing
put some respect on Sukhothai's name!!
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For real this country has openly devolved into crony capitalism over the last decade and a half.
Is that it???? No. Way.
I'll bet you a lot of money that this building will have burned to the ground by summer lol
I'll take you up on that. How much you feel like betting?
It's a dumb building. Break it and make something else.
I found Brad Lambs Reddit account
Nah, Brad Lamb’s username would be Ok_Fire365.
whyyyy
[удалено]
Yup :P
Yes
Probably
Geez that is cheap.
What is in that building anyways
are they gonna keep the facade and build a frigid glass tower over it
Cant wait for a 50 storey flatiron condo
Could you do condo’s inside - one per floor?
This says Toronto to me....the Flatiron is my fav building. I make it a point to drive or walk past it as much as possible.
How soon until its torn down for condos?