Grid Condos, 181 Dundas St E: Small Suites Built for the TMU Market

Grid Condos was built with a very clear buyer in mind: the parents and investors housing students at what is now Toronto Metropolitan University, two blocks west. CentreCourt filled a 47-storey tower with suites mostly under 650 square feet and gave it a dedicated study centre. That focus is the building’s strength and its limit, and you should know which side of it you are on before you buy. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A tower designed around students

When CentreCourt launched Grid in 2015, it pitched the building directly at demand from Ryerson University, now Toronto Metropolitan University, which had very few residence beds for its size. The suites were planned as one- and two-bedrooms between about 415 and 640 square feet, and the second floor was given over to a roughly 6,000 square foot learning centre with Wi-Fi, printers and study space.

That planning shows in today’s listings. Most suites for sale are one-bedrooms and one-plus-dens under 600 square feet, with a smaller number of compact two-bedrooms. If you are an end user looking for room to grow, this is the wrong building; if you want a rentable suite near a campus, it was made for you.

One discrepancy to note: condos.ca and UrbanToronto’s 2015 launch coverage give 47 storeys and 528 suites, while a 2017 UrbanToronto construction update described it as a 50-storey, 563-unit tower. Rely on the registered declaration if the count matters to you.

The rest of the amenity program was also planned with long study nights in mind. ESQAPE Design handled the amenity interiors, and the plans called for a gym of more than 3,000 square feet and roughly 5,000 square feet of outdoor amenity space, which is a lot of shared room for a building of small suites.

Page + Steele’s grid, and a critic’s view

The name comes from the grid patterns that run across the east and west faces of the tower. Page + Steele / IBI Group also designed Dundas Square Gardens across Dundas on the north-east corner, so the two towers read as a pair at the intersection.

Christopher Hume, reviewing the finished building for Storeys, gave it a B. He liked the clean lines and the glassy ground floor but felt the podium does not connect well to its site: you enter from Dundas, the garage entrance is on Jarvis, and the open two-storey section above grade reads as wasted space. He also credited Grid with being a clear improvement on the 1970s and 1980s buildings along Jarvis.

For an owner, that critique is mostly about how the building meets the street, not about living in it. Upper floors have the views; lower floors face a busy, still-changing intersection.

Dundas and Jarvis, day to day

This is a high-traffic corner. The Dundas streetcar stops at the door, Yonge-Dundas and the Eaton Centre are a short walk west, and TMU, St. Michael’s Hospital and George Brown’s downtown programs are all nearby, which is the rental case in one sentence.

The intersection has been rebuilt over the past decade, with Grid and Dundas Square Gardens replacing older low-rise buildings. It is still a rough-edged part of downtown in places, and street life here is busy at all hours. Walk it in the evening before you decide. The automatic panel on this page covers transit, schools and walkability.

For an investor, the rental case rests on that walkability. Tenants here are typically students, hospital staff and young professionals who do not own cars, so a suite without parking is not the handicap it would be in the suburbs. The flip side is turnover: leases in a student-heavy building tend to follow the academic year, and you should plan for some vacancy in late summer.

Pricing: an entry point, with a high fee per foot

condos.ca puts the building average at about $807 per square foot, below newer towers around Yonge and Dundas and in line with how the market prices small suites in older-design investor buildings right now. With seven suites for sale and ten for lease at the time of writing, there is real choice.

One-bedrooms under 500 square feet were asking roughly $339,000 to $388,000, one-plus-dens about $389,000 to $429,000, and a compact two-bedroom was also listed. That makes Grid one of the cheaper ways into a newer tower downtown.

There were ten suites offered for lease against seven for sale at the time of writing, which is consistent with a building that was planned around renters. If you are an end user, that ratio tells you who your neighbours are likely to be.

The catch is the fee. Active listings showed about $1.26 per square foot, which looks steep. Two things soften it: heat and air conditioning are in the fee here, and small suites always look expensive per foot because the shared costs do not shrink with the suite. In dollars, the one-bedrooms were paying a little over $300 a month. For aggregate recent trades, see my building sold report.

Building specifications

Amenities at Grid Condos

The second-floor learning centre is the unusual one: a quiet place to study or work outside a 450-square-foot suite, which matters more in a building of small units than any pool would. The gym was planned at over 3,000 square feet, generous for a building at this price point.

Jatin’s honest take on Grid Condos

Grid Condos — frequently asked questions

Looking at Church–Wellesley, Corktown, Moss Park and Cabbagetown more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.