Great Gulf Is Loving Toronto’s East End. Here's Why

Great Gulf has teamed with Hullmark Developments on Home: Power + Adelaide, a 21-storey condo with a hefty retail component. Great Gulf president Christopher Wein said the project will catalyze further Downtown East development.

Great Gulf acquired half of the site — formerly home to the Sing Tao newspaper building, on Parliament Street between Richmond and Adelaide streets — several years back, and brought Hullmark on board as a JV investment partner. Wein said the original plan was for a smaller building, but the odd shape of the site presented design challenges. The partners decided to buy up the entire block, and do a more substantial building. “It’s rare in Toronto you get a property with four street frontages,” said Wein, who negotiated the final four acquisitions, which he described as a "very slow, methodical process."

Home will have 550 residential units (300 sold when it launched last fall), and amenities including fitness facilities, a pet spa and outdoor pool. It will deliver substantial retail to an area that could use it, with 80K SF over two floors. “Given the size of the footprint we could see some larger-scale retailers here, such as a grocery store or a pharmacy,” Wein said. There will be room for restaurants and coffee shops, taking advantage of new public park space Great Gulf is creating on the building’s east side. “This will be a significant retail destination."

Downtown East offers ample opportunity, Wein said. West end neighbourhoods like the Entertainment District, King West and Liberty Village have been built out, “and the character of those areas has changed dramatically — they’ve become mono-dimensional.” By contrast, gentrification efforts in areas abutting Home — Corktown, Distillery District, Regent Park, King East — have sought to preserve the community fabric via projects that are more human-scale. That is the aim with Home. “It will feel like a neighbourhood building, not a giant point tower.”

Great Gulf’s sister company First Gulf is busy in the east, putting finishing touches on Globe and Mail Centre, and working with the city on a vision for an office-retail-transit hub on the former Unilever site. It is also planning an office building at 25 Ontario St. “And we’re going to look to assemble more lands here,” Wein said. “Whenever we come into neighbourhoods and do buildings that are transformative, we try to assemble other sites in that district, so we benefit from the fact we’re creating transformative buildings.” (Great Gulf just announced a JV with Dream Unlimited for a waterfront condo project.)

Meanwhile, One Bloor, Great Gulf’s flagship, is in the midst of occupancy, and Wein said the landmark tower will be full by year’s end. Nordstrom Rack moves in this fall. Construction is underway on Monde and Yonge + Rich, and plans are being finalized for 8 Cumberland. Great Gulf is gearing up to launch its first purpose-built rental building in Toronto: a 42-storey, 400-unit tower on Blue Jays Way. “It’s an asset class we want to build a portfolio of and own,” Wein said, and three others are coming soon. “Great Gulf has been around 41 years, so we have a diversified land bank. That gives us a lot of flexibility.”