1 Yorkville, 1 Yorkville Ave: 58 Storeys of Small Suites at Yonge and Bloor

1 Yorkville is the building I show people who want a Yorkville address at the lowest possible entry price. It is a tall, busy, investor-heavy tower with a lot of small suites, and that is both its appeal and the thing you need to go in clear-eyed about. The rooftop is the best part of it, and the fee structure is better than most of its neighbours. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A tower built for the rooftop

The reason 1 Yorkville stood out when it launched was what Plaza and Bazis put on top of it. The roof is a multi-level amenity space rather than a single deck: an indoor lounge and bar with a fireplace, a reflecting pool that wraps around that lounge in a U shape, a north-side deck with barbecues, a tiered outdoor theatre with a projection screen, and a sun deck on the uppermost level.

The design does real work up there. The tops of the vertical fins and glazed openings on the facade rise past the roof to form a parapet that shelters the rooftop from wind, which matters a great deal at nearly 60 storeys. Without it, an outdoor pool that high would be unusable for much of the year.

A second amenity floor sits lower down, on level 6 at the top of the podium, so residents are not all crowding the roof. When you view a suite here, ask to see both floors, and ask how the rooftop pool and theatre are booked and when they open and close for the season.

Small suites, and lots of them

With roughly 555 suites over a footprint at one of the tightest corners on Yonge Street, this tower leans hard toward compact layouts. Sizes start around 451 sq ft, and the active listings when I checked were mostly one-bedroom and one-plus-den plans in the 450 to 600 sq ft range, with a single large three-bedroom-plus-den at the top end.

That mix tells you who owns here: a lot of investors and first-time buyers who want the postcode, and a smaller number of owner-occupiers in the larger upper suites. Construction coverage noted that levels 7 to 31 repeat one floor plate and levels 37 to 51 use another, so suites on the same stack are very similar. That is useful for comparables; it also means your suite competes directly with its neighbours above and below whenever you sell or lease.

If you are an end user, look hard at whether a den is a usable room or just an alcove, and whether the bedroom has a real window. In the smallest plans, the difference between a good layout and a poor one is a few square feet in the wrong place.

The fee covers more than it looks like

Here is the detail buyers miss. The fee at 1 Yorkville includes heat, air conditioning and water as well as common elements and building insurance. Many newer Yorkville towers meter heating and cooling to each suite, so you get a lower fee on paper and a separate bill every month.

On the active listings I reviewed, fees worked out to roughly $0.91 per square foot. Monthly fees across the listings ranged from about $396 on a small one-bedroom to about $1,593 on the large three-bedroom-plus-den. Hydro for your own lights and appliances is still yours; confirm the exact split in the status certificate.

Parking and lockers are not listed in the fee. In a building with this many small suites, a lot of units were sold without parking, so if you need a space, confirm it is deeded or assigned to the suite you are buying, and what it adds to the fee.

Living at Yonge and Yorkville

The address is literally the first lot on Yorkville Avenue. The tower faces a row of Victorian storefronts across Yonge Street, and Bloor Street shopping and the rest of Yorkville are on your doorstep; the subway, food and parks are in the data panel on this page.

The trade-off is the street. This is one of the busiest corners in the city, and the block around it is still filling in with very tall neighbours, including 11 Yorkville a few doors along the street and 8 Cumberland a short walk away. Ask which way a suite faces and what is going up beside it before you fall in love with the view.

Lower floors on the Yonge side live with the noise of the street; higher floors trade that for open views, depending on what the neighbouring towers block. With a tower this tall, the floor you are on changes the experience more than almost anything else, so compare a low suite and a high suite before you decide what the premium is worth to you.

Pricing: the Yorkville entry ticket

1 Yorkville averages about $1,145 per square foot on condos.ca. That is close to the newest towers nearby: 8 Cumberland shows about $1,170 and Yorkville Plaza about $1,107, while the older 18 Yorkville sits around $952. You are paying near-new-tower money per foot, but because the suites are small, the total cheque is the lowest way into this corner.

When I checked, five suites were for sale, asking from about $579,800 to about $3,288,000, with one-plus-den plans clustered around $645,000 to $670,000. Eight more suites were for rent, which tells you how much of this building is held as an investment.

That rental supply cuts both ways. It gives an owner-occupier plenty of resale comparables, but it also means an investor is always competing with many near-identical units for tenants. The sold and leased medians in the data panel are a better guide than any single asking price.

Building specifications

Amenities at 1 Yorkville

The rooftop is the amenity package here, and it is genuinely uncommon in Toronto: a wind-sheltered pool, lounge, barbecues and outdoor theatre almost 60 storeys up. In a building this size, ask about booking rules and seasonal hours, because 555 suites share it.

Jatin’s honest take on 1 Yorkville

1 Yorkville — frequently asked questions

Looking at Yorkville, the Annex and Midtown more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.