from today's Globe, looks like first occupancy will be in April...
MONDO CONDO: THE REGENCY
Who's moving into these mansions in the sky? (Strictly entre nous)
DEIRDRE KELLY
February 9, 2008
The Regency may have been the first of the multimillion-dollar condo projects to break ground in Yorkville, but it has been among the last to get off the ground.
In the four years since earmarking the corner of Yorkville and Bay for its development, the Regency has been beaten to the finish line by One St. Thomas and the Hazelton, to name just two neighbouring properties with similarly stratospheric price tags, but built in less time.
Cocktail-party chatter had it that the Regency was having trouble securing buyers for units priced between $3-million and $7-million, or worse, that developers Plazacorp and Hi-Rise Inc. had run out of money.
"Wrong," declares Shellianne Bedder.
The Regency's ebullient marketing director also happens to be married to Warren Green, chief executive officer of Hi-Rise. Ms. Bedder handled all the sales herself, negotiating them from her 10,000-square-foot Forest Hill home.
"The building is now more than 90-per-cent sold out, and the first occupants are moving in as of April," she says.
But residents were expected to have moved in well before now. What happened?
"Clients were demanding more square footage, and each time they did, we had to go back to the drawing board," Mr. Green says.
Built in the New York art deco style by Peter Turner of Turner Fleischer Architects, the Regency was originally conceived as a building with 144 units.
Today, the 19-storey structure has only 58 units, some encompassing whole floors and boasting about 6,000 square feet. Every one comes with a butler supplied by the building as part of its package to purchasers.
"These are mansions in the sky," Ms. Bedder says. "Each of them has been custom-made to the client's specifications. ... When you don't have repetition in a building's design, the cost not only goes up, the time it takes to build them increases also."
So who exactly is moving in?
Ms. Bedder and Mr. Green signed confidentiality agreements with their deep-pocketed clients to ensure that their identities are not revealed, so they aren't talking.
But sources confirm that one of the buyers is Mount Sinai Hospital endocrinologist Paul Walfish, named to the Order of Canada in 1990, and a member of Toronto's Tanenbaum family.
Other purchasers reputedly include a Saudi prince, a prominent politician in the government of Italy, a London-based financier and couple of Canadian celebrities.
As well, it is said that leading British lingerie label Agent Provocateur, founded in 1994 by Serena Rees and Joseph Corré, the only child of trendsetters Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, is eyeing commercial space on the Regency's ground floor, with views onto Bay.
The world's leading luxury intimate-apparel brand is the top-drawer choice of Posh Spice, Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue.
"I'm superstitious," Ms. Bedder says. "They haven't moved in yet, so I'm not confirming a thing."