It's been silly forever - some of these names actually repeat those of existing buildings in the city of decades long past.
I'll admit it's sillier now when someone launches a tower in the Church-Wellesley area called 'Erection'.
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Worst names for condo project
- Thread starter rp07
- Start date
It's been silly forever - some of these names actually repeat those of existing buildings in the city of decades long past.
I'll admit it's sillier now when someone launches a tower in the Church-Wellesley area called 'Erection'.
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grey
Senior Member
DNA - "Downtown's Next Address"
And others that obviously chose the acronym before deciding what it meant.
And others that obviously chose the acronym before deciding what it meant.
scarberiankhatru
Senior Member
Be thankful we're getting references to big cities and tourist spots lately...back in the day, we got names like 'The Shetland.'
grey
Senior Member
Sudden Valley
unimaginative2
Senior Member
^Haha. It really does sound like something bad is going to happen!
adma
Superstar
299 bloor call control.
Senior Member
Hahahahah... I remember while ago when they were doing some facade work on the building at the northwest corner of Church and Wellesley, there was a huge banner up with a logo for a company named:
"Mammoth Erection"
in a style similar to that of Steamworks... but alas, Mammoth Erection is a scaffolding company...
http://www.mammotherection.com
rp07
Active Member
I thought it could'nt get any worse, but Great Gulfs new development called "Charlie" at King and Charlotte street tops it all. Sorry Charlie.
adma
Superstar
Well, maybe it can have a twin named "Irving". And a drive-in restaurant to boot
turdrockfromthesun
Banned
Name I'd pay double to see are "The Robin' 'hood"
Luxurious residences of the Yo Yo Mo Fo Towers.
Luxurious residences of the Yo Yo Mo Fo Towers.
casaguy
Senior Member
Let's find a condo lexicon of our own
No need to conjure up allusions to faraway places - there's plenty to drawn right at home
From Friday's Globe and Mail
October 2, 2008 at 4:37 PM EDT
Dear condo developers and marketers:
About 15 years ago, when the current condo boom was but a small cap-gun 'pop,' I remember being livid at seeing a Toronto condo named after a well-known, formerly-gritty neighbourhood in Manhattan.
"Toronto has its own identity!" I wanted to scream, but back then I didn't have a neat little newspaper soapbox from which to vent my spleen, and had I done it on the street corner on a real soapbox, I would have been arrested.
Then things just got confusing, which angered me more. While the names you were choosing didn't make reference to New York City necessarily (although many did), they also had nothing to do with their neighbourhoods or even Toronto in the larger sense. Was it some sort of game you were all playing to exacerbate our inferiority complex?
Throughout the 1990s, every stupid condo name was another bee in my bonnet, and, by the early 2000s, I found myself looking up "beekeepers" in the Yellow Pages.
Well, I've mellowed since then. I understand the importance of branding, especially when dealing with a product that's not very different from the one just down the street behind the other guy's hoarding. In fact, I've always been fascinated by places like Wildwood, N.J., a blue-collar beach town with hundreds of 1950s and '60s L-shaped motels that would be hard to tell apart were it not for their differing signage, paint schemes and pool configurations.
I also understand the desire to evoke the exotic using far-away place names, so views of supposititious swaying palms replace traffic tie-ups on the Gardiner Expressway. Heck, not only did they do that for those Wildwood motels a half-century ago, they did it right here on rental apartment buildings, since condos hadn't been invented yet. In fact, I wrote about these little bricks-and-mortar imposters — the Monterey, Cardiff, Casablanca, Algiers, Capri, even one named after the fabulous Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami — in this section in May, 2005.
Besides, in recent years you have been improving. Condos now are named after particular streets, street numbers, neighbourhoods or some significant attraction nearby, such as City Hall or the Distillery District. One of you even adopted the first three characters of your building's postal code, which I think is rather clever.
Those of you doing industrial-to-residential conversions almost always employ names and logos that echo your building's former life — whether a tannery or a toy factory — but since it doesn't take a PhD in marketing to understand there's instant romance in using such imagery, I'm not going to jump up and down about it.
Then again, the pessimist in me says it's the law of averages at play here — there are so many good names nowadays only because there are so many holes in the ground.
Dig deeper and there are just as many offenders: For instance, the other day I came across a condo named after an entire U.S. state and another named after a whole city. Thankfully, it wasn't NYC this time, but I think you can do better.
Please clip-n-save these handy tips for the next time you're stuck: I reiterate — Toronto is not New York or any other U.S. city.
A lot of twenty- and thirtysomethings will tell you that it's pretty freakin' cool despite this. The more you compare us to other places, the more you undermine our collective confidence, so please stop. We have our own history of artists' areas, so rather than referring to, say, Greenwich Village, try Gerrard Street Village, where Toronto's beatniks once roamed.
And speaking of history, Toronto has many almost-forgotten names of amalgamated towns (and districts) that would be nice to see again. If you can name a condo after a neighbourhood that's 800 kilometres away, why not one that's eight kilometres away, such as "The Swansea"?
That's an elegant, art deco-sounding name if there ever was one. And the former village, annexed by Toronto in 1967, was named after a faraway city in Wales, so there's some exotic bang-for-your-buck if you're still not convinced.
Toronto, like every other city, was once split up into dozens of telephone exchange districts (covered here in November 2006). Conjuring up these would immediately moor your building to its new surroundings. Don't "The Grover," "The Redfern," "The Lennox" and "The Hargrave" have a nice ring to them?
How about local landmarks that are gone?
Any Etobicoke lakeshore condo could name itself "The Cruise Condo" in tribute to the demolished art deco Cruise Motel and receive an instant cache of cool. Maybe you could recreate their amazing neon sign with the built-in clock.
If you'd like your condo to have a roguish edge, why not borrow a personage from our past?
How does "The Boyd Residence," after the infamous 1950s bank-robbing Boyd Gang, sound? Or, going further back, what about "The William Lyon"? Regal but too old, right? Okay, how 'bout "Baron Black Tower"?
I think you get the point. I've always said that we Canadians don't do enough to celebrate our own, and you're not helping with all of your non-specific condo names.
Not to mention I can't afford the beekeeper right now.
Sincerely, The Architourist
No need to conjure up allusions to faraway places - there's plenty to drawn right at home
From Friday's Globe and Mail
October 2, 2008 at 4:37 PM EDT
Dear condo developers and marketers:
About 15 years ago, when the current condo boom was but a small cap-gun 'pop,' I remember being livid at seeing a Toronto condo named after a well-known, formerly-gritty neighbourhood in Manhattan.
"Toronto has its own identity!" I wanted to scream, but back then I didn't have a neat little newspaper soapbox from which to vent my spleen, and had I done it on the street corner on a real soapbox, I would have been arrested.
Then things just got confusing, which angered me more. While the names you were choosing didn't make reference to New York City necessarily (although many did), they also had nothing to do with their neighbourhoods or even Toronto in the larger sense. Was it some sort of game you were all playing to exacerbate our inferiority complex?
Throughout the 1990s, every stupid condo name was another bee in my bonnet, and, by the early 2000s, I found myself looking up "beekeepers" in the Yellow Pages.
Well, I've mellowed since then. I understand the importance of branding, especially when dealing with a product that's not very different from the one just down the street behind the other guy's hoarding. In fact, I've always been fascinated by places like Wildwood, N.J., a blue-collar beach town with hundreds of 1950s and '60s L-shaped motels that would be hard to tell apart were it not for their differing signage, paint schemes and pool configurations.
I also understand the desire to evoke the exotic using far-away place names, so views of supposititious swaying palms replace traffic tie-ups on the Gardiner Expressway. Heck, not only did they do that for those Wildwood motels a half-century ago, they did it right here on rental apartment buildings, since condos hadn't been invented yet. In fact, I wrote about these little bricks-and-mortar imposters — the Monterey, Cardiff, Casablanca, Algiers, Capri, even one named after the fabulous Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami — in this section in May, 2005.
Besides, in recent years you have been improving. Condos now are named after particular streets, street numbers, neighbourhoods or some significant attraction nearby, such as City Hall or the Distillery District. One of you even adopted the first three characters of your building's postal code, which I think is rather clever.
Those of you doing industrial-to-residential conversions almost always employ names and logos that echo your building's former life — whether a tannery or a toy factory — but since it doesn't take a PhD in marketing to understand there's instant romance in using such imagery, I'm not going to jump up and down about it.
Then again, the pessimist in me says it's the law of averages at play here — there are so many good names nowadays only because there are so many holes in the ground.
Dig deeper and there are just as many offenders: For instance, the other day I came across a condo named after an entire U.S. state and another named after a whole city. Thankfully, it wasn't NYC this time, but I think you can do better.
Please clip-n-save these handy tips for the next time you're stuck: I reiterate — Toronto is not New York or any other U.S. city.
A lot of twenty- and thirtysomethings will tell you that it's pretty freakin' cool despite this. The more you compare us to other places, the more you undermine our collective confidence, so please stop. We have our own history of artists' areas, so rather than referring to, say, Greenwich Village, try Gerrard Street Village, where Toronto's beatniks once roamed.
And speaking of history, Toronto has many almost-forgotten names of amalgamated towns (and districts) that would be nice to see again. If you can name a condo after a neighbourhood that's 800 kilometres away, why not one that's eight kilometres away, such as "The Swansea"?
That's an elegant, art deco-sounding name if there ever was one. And the former village, annexed by Toronto in 1967, was named after a faraway city in Wales, so there's some exotic bang-for-your-buck if you're still not convinced.
Toronto, like every other city, was once split up into dozens of telephone exchange districts (covered here in November 2006). Conjuring up these would immediately moor your building to its new surroundings. Don't "The Grover," "The Redfern," "The Lennox" and "The Hargrave" have a nice ring to them?
How about local landmarks that are gone?
Any Etobicoke lakeshore condo could name itself "The Cruise Condo" in tribute to the demolished art deco Cruise Motel and receive an instant cache of cool. Maybe you could recreate their amazing neon sign with the built-in clock.
If you'd like your condo to have a roguish edge, why not borrow a personage from our past?
How does "The Boyd Residence," after the infamous 1950s bank-robbing Boyd Gang, sound? Or, going further back, what about "The William Lyon"? Regal but too old, right? Okay, how 'bout "Baron Black Tower"?
I think you get the point. I've always said that we Canadians don't do enough to celebrate our own, and you're not helping with all of your non-specific condo names.
Not to mention I can't afford the beekeeper right now.
Sincerely, The Architourist
androiduk
Senior Member
adma
Superstar
Though forewarned re the case of Bohemian Embassy...
Oh, BTW, one of my favourite bad apartment building names is the "Marlester", out around Broadview + Cosburn--I pity any single males who live there...
Moonmoth
Active Member
Giraffe (at Bloor & Dundas) is pretty bad, it's going to be awful anyway, and it's already been graffitti'd too with the words: WE NEED AFFORDABLE HOUSING".
Isn't there one at Landsdowne & Dupont called the "Toilet Factory" pretty bad.
Can someone explain the difference between a condo & an apartment? Is it just that you pay condo fees at a condo and not so in an apt??
Isn't there one at Landsdowne & Dupont called the "Toilet Factory" pretty bad.
Can someone explain the difference between a condo & an apartment? Is it just that you pay condo fees at a condo and not so in an apt??
rbt
Senior Member
An apartment is a built form, like townhouse or bungalow.
A condo is company that owns/maintains a portion of assets which home owners control. A condo corp can cover anything from an apartment building + amenities (typical use), to townhouse front/back yards, to just a common park or golf course between a number of single detached homes.