Progress today:
Below is an article for One Cole in today's Globe and Mail. (Couldn't find a separate thread for that project).
I believe One Cole would be the left-most blue crane in the last pic above.
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ONE COLE: OPENING NEXT SPRING AT DUNDAS AND PARLIAMENT
How do you sell a glass castle in the ghetto?
Marketing Regent Park's first condo won't be easy. If the scheme fails, so will the $1-billion plan to save the housing project
SARAH BOESVELD
September 13, 2008
In the squat brick buildings of the old Regent Park, sheets serve as curtains in many of the single-paned windows. On the side of one wall, a mural of a young boy casts a concerned gaze over the graffiti-scarred housing project, a place infamous for its drugs, violence and grinding poverty.
In stark contrast to all this stands a wall of sleek placards at the corner of Dundas and Parliament streets, on the western boundary of the neighbourhood. The signs trumpet the arrival of a new condo dubbed "One Cole," a project fronted with the daunting tagline, "One changes everything."
Indeed, the developers and city officials behind the neighbourhood's $1-billion redevelopment are hoping that One Cole will help to change everything for Regent Park by luring in middle-class condo dwellers, transforming a slum into a mixed-income community.
That's why One Cole's marketing drive - which hasn't even formally begun, despite a plan to welcome residents next spring - will be so crucial to Regent Park's future.
Considering the housing project's bad rap and hefty competition from other downtown condos, will buyers turn on their heels?
It's a big marketing challenge, but the Daniels Corporation, the developer behind One Cole and the Regent Park revitalization, says it's prepared to counter the stigma.
The placards at Dundas and Parliament avoid the words "Regent Park," but One Cole's website provides links to archived press releases about Daniels's role in razing and rebuilding the neighbourhood.
Martin Blake, vice-president of project implementation for Daniels, says the company is considering using the project's infamous name when it launches its full marketing campaign by year's end.
"We've never shied away from it," Mr. Blake said, referring to the fact that the company's name has always been attached to the concept of Regent Park's revitalization. "We're very proud of the architecture of this project and we're trying to show that at this point."
While Daniels says that about 1,000 people have registered for the chance to buy one of the 293 units starting at $189,900, the developer is building first, selling later - a rare move in Toronto's condo market. It suggests that Daniels is wise to the challenge of marketing a blighted pocket of the city, says Jeanhy Shim, a real-estate analyst with Toronto-based Thinkbuild Consulting Inc.
"Whether rightly or wrongly, the perception was that the neighbourhood had a bad reputation," Ms. Shim says. "[Building first] shows the developer is confident in the community."
The company took the same approach with a handful of other condo developments in Toronto, Mr. Blake says, citing three recent Daniels projects in North York.
"It's one thing to be able to go to a community sales centre and see what may be happening in the future ... but to actually be able to be there and point to your unit in the building and be like, 'Wow, that's my balcony, I'm going to live there,' that's a fantastic thing for purchasers."
Toronto real-estate marketing expert Roman Bodnarchuk, chief executive officer of N5R.com, thinks that Daniels should keep the name "Regent Park" out of the condo ads. "We've had 40 years of this negative stigma, and it's very hard in an ad campaign to change it," he says.
"As soon as you say 'Regent Park,' people have a lot of powerful images and a lot of those don't include lining up to buy a condo."
The bottom line is that if the developers can't persuade middle-class shoppers to snap up property in Regent Park, the mixed-income revitalization plan risks failure, experts say. "It would be unfortunate if the whole project went down the tubes because they can't attract middle-class residents," says Alison Bain, a professor of urban geography at York University. "[But] despite the stigma that's attached to this neighbourhood, I can think of any number of neighbourhoods in downtown Toronto that have been totally transformed through gentrification," she says, citing Leslieville, Yorkville and Queen Street West.
"It shouldn't at all be a challenge to attract new middle-class condo dwellers [to Regent Park]," she says, especially since the neighbourhood is so close to downtown.
Regent Park might attract people who embrace the identity of what was once considered a revolutionary social-housing experiment, Ms. Bain says.
Perhaps folks like those who snapped up condos in St. Lawrence Market - a rare but workable mix of owned apartments, co-ops, rent-controlled and subsidized housing - will be keen to buy into One Cole.
"If you look at the scale of the architecture [in St. Lawrence] and the surrounding buildings, it's not overwhelming. It's not big glass towers," Ms. Bain says.
However, big and glass is just what Phase One of Regent's revitalization is shaping up to be.
The rendering of One Cole in the ads does offer a hint of the old red brick, but most of the new building's design is slick and crystalline.
But slick isn't everyone's style, and some people who live in the neighbourhood or walk by One Cole's future home struggle to find remnants of Regent in the ads.
"I think they're trying to get a little more street cred by dumping the name Regent Park," says passerby Helene Kay as she surveys the snazzy signs for One Cole.
On a bench alongside Regent Park's local swimming pool, lifelong resident Heather Bingelman, 34, corrals her five children, yelling after each one to keep them in line.
She sighs and dismisses the hoarding with one wave of her hand.
"They're not acknowledging Regent Park," she said.
"They're disregarding us and who we are and how we created this."
Phases of construction
To be completed in 12 to 15 years; expected to grow to 12,500 people from the original 7,500.
The original roster of 2,100 Toronto Community Housing Corp. rental units will be fully replaced; 1,800 units will be within Regent Park and 300 in the surrounding streets. The revitalized Regent will be a diverse mix of housing, with roughly 60 per cent at market prices and 40 per cent subsidized rentals.
Phase One will cover four city blocks with a mix of market and rental housing in five buildings and five blocks of town homes. It kicks off with the two-building, $60-million One Cole condos at Parliament and Dundas Streets with 293 units; one-bedrooms start at $189,900.
Working in conjunction with the Toronto Community Housing Corp. on the revitalization plan, Daniels is developing, building and selling all the market and rental buildings in the brand-new Regent Park.
Sarah Boesveld
