Grenville Street is a quiet side street one block north of College Street, running west from Yonge. Or I suppose it once was a quiet side street. These days, you don't have to travel far in Toronto's central area to hear construction sounds reverberating off walls and pavement, and one of the areas most quickly transforming is that area midway between Downtown and Bloor-Yorkville that Grenville is right in the heart of. Soon enough there will be a 60-storey tower going up right at Yonge Street, but right now just one property to the west is where Karma Condominiums, a 50-storey tower designed by architectsAlliance and developed by Lifetime Developments and CentreCourt Developments, is rising up out of the ground.

Looking southeast at Karma Condos from the north side of Grenville Street, image by Jack Landau

It's been quite a trip out of the ground as developers shifted an 140-year-old heritage house from one side of the side to the other, and had to hold it aloft on steel girders above the new garage excavation below. You can see in the next image where the John Irwin House was originally located by the marks left on the wall of the next building to the west. The 1873-era Second Empire style house was moved to the northeast corner of the site so that it would not be totally lost between Karma and the neighbouring condo once the new tower is completed. In its new location, the John Irwin House will feature prominently with its north and east walls forever open to passersby. Its interior will become commercial space, possibly a restaurant or boutique retail.

Looking southwest at Karma Condos from the north side of Grenville Street, image by Jack Landau

West of the Irwin House, the concrete forms for Karma's ground floor are now taking shape and the first of the walls can now be seen.

Construction on Karma now above grade, image by Jack Landau

The ground floor and second floor of Karma will also feature boutique retail with high ceilings facing Grenville Street. Above that is another high floor, where Karma's extensive range of amenity spaces will be located. Finally, it won't be until the fourth floor when the builders will make it to the typical floorplates here—those are the ones which can be repeated again and again as the building rises. It's in this section of the building where the speed of construction typically picks up to one floor a week, and sometimes even faster than that, and where the 495 condominium suites will be located.

Rendering of Karma, image courtesy of Lifetime/CentreCourt

Karma will top out some time around a year from now, and occupancies here will follow some months after that. We will stay on top of progress here.

In the meantime, additional information and renderings can be found in our Karma dataBase file, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum threads, or leave a comment in the space provided at the bottom of this page.