The LakeShore, 19 Bathurst St: Living Above the Rebuilt 1928 Loblaws

The LakeShore is the building I show buyers who want a grocery store in the building and a long list of amenities for a modest price per square foot. It is a 41-storey Concord Adex tower at Lake Shore and Bathurst, on the West Block site, where the 1928 Loblaws warehouse was taken apart brick by brick and put back together. It is also a big building full of small suites, and that shapes everything about buying here. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A tower on top of Toronto grocery history

The West Block site holds the former Loblaw Groceterias warehouse and head office, which opened in 1928 in the Art Moderne style. It sat empty for years after the Daily Bread Food Bank left in 2000 and was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 2001. Between 2018 and 2021, ERA Architects led the work to salvage and rebuild the four-storey building, reusing as much of the original masonry as they could, and a new four-storey addition was set back on top.

The heritage building is now a retail hub run by Loblaws, its original owner, with a flagship supermarket of about 50,000 sq ft. The residential towers replaced the one-storey warehouse at the north end of the site, which ran under the Gardiner Expressway. The design team was split: architectsAlliance on the retail, Page + Steele / IBI Group on the towers, and ERA on the heritage.

Living above a full-size Loblaws is the single most practical feature of this building. In a part of downtown where many towers send you to a small-format grocer, you can do a full weekly shop without crossing a street.

Size, and the planning numbers that changed

Condos.ca lists The LakeShore at 41 storeys and 886 suites. Early UrbanToronto coverage from 2015 described two towers of 41 and 37 storeys with 876 units between them, so the plans clearly changed over time, and I would not rely on either number without checking the declaration. Either way, this is one of the larger condominiums in the area.

A building of this size has real advantages: the cost of the concierge, the amenities and the reserve fund is spread over a lot of owners. It also has a predictable downside. Resale supply is deep, and when I checked there were 19 suites for sale and 15 for lease. That gives buyers choice and negotiating room, and it gives sellers competition.

Mostly small suites, so choose the plan carefully

The resale stock is dominated by one-bedrooms and one-bedroom-plus-dens. Every one of the eight priced listings I reviewed was a one-bedroom or one-plus-den, and most were between 500 and 700 sq ft. If you need a real two-bedroom, you will be hunting for a short list of suites rather than browsing.

Original finishes were quartz counters, Carrara marble backsplashes, laminate flooring, custom cabinetry and integrated Bosch appliances, with two colour schemes. In a small one-plus-den, look at whether the den is large enough for a desk or a bed, and whether the bedroom has a window rather than a sliding wall facing the living room.

Views depend heavily on direction. South and west suites look toward the lake and the Bathurst Quay area, while north-facing suites look over the Gardiner and the rail lands toward the city. A low north-facing suite will hear the expressway.

Daily life at Lake Shore and Bathurst

This is a busy intersection. Lake Shore Boulevard, Bathurst Street and the Gardiner meet here, so traffic noise is a fact of life at street level and on lower floors. The upside is that the lake, the Martin Goodman Trail and the Bathurst Quay are a short walk south, and CityPlace and Fort York are a short walk north and east.

The automatic panel on this page covers transit, walkability and nearby food. What the panel will not tell you is how much of daily life the site itself covers. Early plans for West Block called for a pharmacy, a wine store, a restaurant of about 11,000 sq ft and a cafe beside the Loblaws, along with a public art installation under the Gardiner at the north end. Check what is actually open today, but even the grocery store alone makes this building more self-contained than most of its neighbours.

What The LakeShore costs

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $856 per square foot, in line with or slightly below other newer towers in CityPlace and along the waterfront. That is a reasonable price for a 2021 tower with this amenity list.

The eight priced listings I reviewed were asking between $438,000 and $545,000, all one-bedrooms or one-bedroom-plus-dens. With 19 suites for sale at once, I would expect buyers to have room to negotiate, and I would look hard at how long similar suites have been sitting before I set an offer price.

Monthly fees across those listings ran from about $469 to $603, roughly $0.91 per square foot. Condos.ca lists only common elements, building insurance and water as included, so heat and hydro are likely metered separately, and parking is not listed. For a value check on a specific suite, I can pull the comparables through my building sold report.

Building specifications

Amenities at The LakeShore Condos

Condos.ca lists a concierge, guest suites and a gym. Concord’s marketing went much further: a yoga studio, a swim spa, a theatre, a kids’ play room and outdoor playground, a pet spa, billiards, mini golf and barbecue areas, and early plans showed a pool and fountains in a courtyard between the towers. Walk the amenity floors and confirm what is open and how bookings work before you pay a premium for any of it.

Jatin’s honest take on The LakeShore Condos

The LakeShore Condos — 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.