Quad Lofts, 23 Brant St: A 2006 King West Soft Loft With Parking in the Fee

Quad Lofts at 23 Brant Street is what I show buyers who want the King West loft look without a century-old warehouse’s quirks. It went up in 2006 with polished concrete, 10-foot exposed ceilings and a courtyard, and its maintenance fee covers heat and parking, which most newer towers nearby do not. The catch is that it sits on a street people come to for the nightlife, and you need to choose your exposure carefully. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A new building made to look like the old ones around it

Quad Lofts is not a conversion. It is a 2006 new build designed to sit comfortably among the old industrial warehouses on the streets west of Spadina, and it borrows their vocabulary: a grid-like, Chicago-school frame, concrete inside and out, and big windows. One loft guide puts it in the same family as Merchandise Lofts, which is a fair comparison for the look if not for the history.

Inside, the finishes are what the industry calls a soft loft. Floors are polished concrete, ceilings are exposed concrete at about 10 feet, and track lighting does the work that pot lights would in a conventional condo. Kitchen cabinetry runs right to the ceiling, which uses the height well, and bathrooms were done with walk-in showers and stainless steel sinks.

The advantage of a soft loft over a hard loft is practical. You get the ceiling height and the raw materials, but with modern windows, a proper building envelope and mechanical systems from the 2000s rather than the 1910s. The disadvantage is that concrete everywhere is hard and echoey, so budget for rugs and soft furnishings if sound matters to you.

Quad Lofts and Quad Lofts II are two different buildings

This is the point that trips up buyers searching online. The building at 19 Brant Street is marketed as Quad Lofts II, and some sources blend the two. One guide I checked quotes 11 storeys and 128 suites in its description, then 9 storeys and 67 suites in its fact table, and gives the address as 19-23 Brant. Those second figures do not match 23 Brant.

For 23 Brant, the numbers I work from are 11 storeys, 128 suites and corporation TSCC-1804, registered in October 2006. The same guide describes the project as two mid-rise loft buildings with shared amenities. If you are buying at either address, confirm in the status certificate which corporation you are joining, what is shared between the two buildings, and how the shared costs are split. Do not assume a listing’s building description is about the address on the agreement.

Suite sizes and the layouts you will actually see

Suites here range from roughly 603 to 1,470 square feet. That is a useful floor: there are no 400-square-foot micro units dragging the averages around, and most plans are open-concept one-bedrooms, one-plus-dens and two-bedrooms where the living, dining and kitchen share a single long room.

Open plans suit the loft look but give you fewer walls to work with. If you need a closed second bedroom for a roommate or a child, read the floor plan carefully, because some dens here are open to the living area and are not true rooms. The upper floors include penthouse suites, and at least some have large balconies; outdoor space varies a lot from suite to suite, so it is worth comparing plan by plan.

Living on Brant Street

Brant Street runs north from King Street West into the heart of the King West restaurant and nightlife strip. That is the draw: dining, bars and live entertainment within a few minutes on foot, and a reasonable walk to the financial core. The automatic data panel on this page covers transit and walkability in detail.

The trade-off is noise. A resident review I found warns that lower-floor suites and those facing Brant Street can be loud at night, and I agree with that advice for this whole pocket. If you sleep lightly, look at upper floors and suites facing the interior courtyard, which one source describes as a green space with water features.

The other thing to know is how much the area keeps changing. King West has filled in with new towers over the past fifteen years, and an 11-storey building can lose a view it had when it was finished. Ask about any applications on neighbouring lots before you pay a premium for an open outlook.

What Quad Lofts costs per square foot

The building average sits around $950 per square foot. For context, two nearby loft-style buildings I also cover sit on either side of that: 75 Portland at roughly $845 and Glas Lofts on Oxley Street at roughly $977. Quad Lofts is in the middle of the King West soft-loft range, not at a discount.

Fees deserve a second look. The fee here includes heat, air conditioning, water, building insurance and parking. In many newer downtown towers, heat and cooling are on your own meter and parking is a separate charge, so a Quad Lofts fee that looks higher per square foot may be closer to even once you add those back. Compare the all-in monthly cost, not the headline fee.

There were no active resale listings at the time I wrote this, so asking prices give no guide right now. For what suites have actually traded for, use the aggregate sales data on this page or ask me for a building sold report.

Building specifications

Amenities at Quad Lofts

The amenity package is modest and built around everyday use: a concierge desk, a gym, a party room and meeting room, and a landscaped courtyard. There is no pool, which helps keep the fee in check, and Beanfield Fibre is available for anyone who works from home.

Jatin’s honest take on Quad Lofts

Quad Lofts — frequently asked questions

Looking at King West, Liberty Village and CityPlace more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.