One month ago Donald Trump made a trip to Toronto. The man with the world's most infamous combover broke ground-with a golden shovel no less-on his latest real estate venture: a 57 story tower filled with premium priced condos and a five star hotel, located in the heart of the financial district. It was a grand spectacle in typical Trump fashion that also served as a perfect representation of where Toronto is headed. No one embodies capitalism, wealth and irritating catch phrases better than Trump and two out of those three qualities are about to hit this city with a vengeance. Our dollar is reaching record highs, bringing piles of cash into the city and the money has to be spent on something (where else could it go, to the poor? Are you mad?). With all that superfluous income, luxury condos seem to be the cause du jour.
In addition to Trump International Tower, 13 new high-end condo estates will be flooding the downtown area. Blueblood brand names like Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, Crystal Blu, Shangri-La are opening their doors to the Toronto elite. These new buildings will offer all of amenities that the super-rich have come to expect. For example, The Riz will provide residents with a full floor spa, a ballroom, and the access to the attached hotel's gourmet 24-hour room service. The rooms themselves feature twelve-foot ceilings, bathrooms equipped with LCD televisions, and in some cases private elevators. So, these buildings won't exactly be lightweight affairs.
Last week, a glitzy red carpet gala was held in Yorkville simply to announce the opening of a condo sales centre. Patrons desperate to claim a condo stood in line for hours for the privilege...or at least the people they hired to hole their place were. We are talking about extraordinarily wealthy people here. The condos are selling at a minimum of $748 per square foot, with top tier residences at Four Seasons and MuseumHouse pushing that mark past $1,500.To put these numbers into perspective, comparable Toronto dwellings used to sell for as little as $500 per square foot.
The figures sound outrageous and for the Toronto market they are, but from a global perspective these residences are a quite a deal. Equivalent lodgings in New York can command as much as $5,000 per square foot. As a result of these "bargains", foreign investors are snatching up all the vacant spaces they can manage. Offers are piling in from London, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, amongst other countries. Most of these bids have been made by private investors who view Toronto as an excellent location for conducting business in North American market, but there are rumors that a few high-profile celebrities have also made offers (Hopefully Tom Cruise has yet to discover the close proximity between Yorkville and the Toronto chapter of Church of Scientology).
All of this certainly sounds like good news for Torontonians. Surely, the economy can only be boosted by such an influx of cold, hard cash. On one level this is true, but sadly these buildings will almost exclusively serve the interests of the elite and the economic disparity in Toronto is slowly becoming a major issue. Most of the city was once comprised of middle-income citizens, now they make up closer to a third of the population and their average income dropped. The volume of people on high and low ends of the economic spectrum are increasing, polarizing the city in the process. As beautiful and financially viable as these new buildings will be, they will inevitably increase property rates, forcing lower income citizens out of the centre of town and into the suburban fringes, clogging our already congested public transportation systems in the process.
This problem reaches far beyond the GTA. The poverty gap in Canada now rates equally with Indonesia and below both Egypt and Pakastan. The kind of frivolous spending embodied by these luxury phallic symbols will only make it worse (even if we will do better in an international building measuring competition). An invasion of skyscrapers will improve the city architecturally, help raise Toronto's status as economic power, and wrangle in some celebrities, but most of the city will be stuck fifty stories below those who benefit. There's never been a better time to be rich in TO. No wonder Donald Trump was so thrilled to come to town.
By Philip Brown |
