Bianca Condos, 420 Dupont St: Tridel’s Rooftop-Pool Mid-Rise in the Annex

Bianca is the building I show buyers who want the Annex without a tower and without a 1980s fee structure. It is a nine-storey Tridel mid-rise at Dupont and Howland, finished in 2022, with a white geometric façade by Teeple Architects and a rooftop pool that very few Annex condos can match. It is also priced like a new Tridel building, and that is the part to think hard about. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A fortune cookie factory turned into a white-framed mid-rise

Before Bianca, this corner held light industrial buildings: Wing’s food products, the company best known locally for making fortune cookies, and a typesetting business called Mono Lino. Wing’s moved its production to Etobicoke and the buildings sat empty until Tridel assembled the site.

What replaced them is one of the more distinctive mid-rises on Dupont. Teeple Architects gave it a bright white grid of framing around deep-set glass, and UrbanToronto described the cladding as bringing a geometric rigour to the street. The upper floors step back, which is where the larger terrace suites sit.

That stepped form matters for buyers. A setback floor usually means a bigger terrace and a quieter outlook, but it also means the suite directly below may have a terrace above its ceiling line rather than open sky. Look at where your suite sits in the massing, not just its floor plan.

Three collections, and why the bigger plans are the point

Tridel sold Bianca in three groupings. The Castle Collection covered the more conventional suites, roughly 601 to 1,208 sq ft. The Annex Collection ran about 1,151 to 1,634 sq ft across more than a dozen plans, and the Terrace Collection, roughly 1,222 to 1,738 sq ft, held the setback and penthouse suites with the largest outdoor space.

Several of the two-bedroom plans split the bedrooms to opposite sides of the living area, each with its own ensuite. That is a layout downsizers and roommates both ask me for, and it is less common than it should be in new Toronto product.

The practical takeaway is that Bianca is not mainly a one-bedroom investor building. The current listings skew toward one-plus-dens and two-bedrooms, and the building’s identity is the 1,000-plus square foot suite with real outdoor space. If you are buying small here, you are competing with towers that do small better and cheaper.

The amenity floor is on the roof

Most nine-storey buildings in the Annex give you a lobby and maybe a gym. Bianca put its main outdoor amenity on an upper terrace: an outdoor pool, private cabanas, an outdoor fireplace, barbecue stations and lounge seating with views south toward the Bloor-Yorkville skyline and the CN Tower.

Indoors, the 2017 amenity plans showed a double-height lobby with concierge at the Dupont and Howland corner, a private dining room, a party room and lounge, a fitness centre and a yoga studio. II BY IV Design did the interiors.

A rooftop pool is a genuine lifestyle feature, but it is also a cost centre. Pool membranes, heaters and the waterproofing underneath them are expensive to maintain on a roof. For a building this new the reserve fund study should already account for it, and it is worth reading that line before you buy.

Living on Dupont, between the Annex and Casa Loma

Dupont Street is changing. The old industrial strip along the rail corridor is filling in with mid-rise condos, and Bianca was one of the first finished buildings in that wave. Expect more construction nearby over the next decade as other former industrial lots redevelop.

South of Dupont you are into the Annex proper: Victorian houses, the Bloor Street shops and restaurants, and the University of Toronto edge. North across the tracks, the land rises toward Casa Loma and the Baldwin Steps. Day to day, the building sits at the quieter, residential end of the Annex rather than in the Bloor Street bustle.

Transit, schools, Walk Score and nearby food and parks are in the data panel on this page, so I will not repeat them here. What I will say is that Dupont is a busy arterial next to a rail corridor, so lower suites facing Dupont hear the street and the rail line more than suites set back from it.

Pricing and fees at 420 Dupont

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $1,068 per square foot. That is at the top of the Annex range and reflects both the Tridel name and the age of the building. You are paying new-build money, with only a few years of resale history to compare against.

Current asking prices give a sense of the spread. Three one-plus-den suites in the 600 to 699 sq ft band are asking between about $670,000 and $729,000, and three two-bedroom listings range from about $958,000 to roughly $1.25 million depending on size and outlook. Larger terrace plans ask more. With only a handful of resales since registration, I would lean on per-square-foot comparisons with other new Annex mid-rises rather than on this building’s own short history, and my building sold report is the place to start.

Fees on active listings run about $1.03 per square foot, or roughly $640 to $1,160 a month across the current listings. The source data did not specify what the fee includes, so confirm on the status certificate whether heat, cooling and parking are separately metered or billed. For a newer building that is the single most important line to check when comparing fees.

Building specifications

Amenities at Bianca Condos

The rooftop pool and terrace are the reason to choose Bianca over another Annex mid-rise; they give you a summer amenity most of the neighbourhood’s boutique buildings simply do not have. Indoors the package is solid but standard: concierge, gym, yoga room and entertaining space.

Jatin’s honest take on Bianca Condos

Bianca Condos — 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.