The St. Regis Residences, 325 Bay St: Private Floors Above a Hotel

The St. Regis Residences are for a buyer who has already decided they want hotel-tower living in the Financial District and wants to know if this is the one. Floors 32 to 57 of the tower at Bay and Adelaide hold private condominium suites, with their own entrance and elevators, sitting above one of the city’s top hotels. It is a narrow market, the fees are very high, and getting the details right matters more here than almost anywhere. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A hotel on the bottom, private residences on top

This is not a condo tower with a hotel-style lobby. It is a working luxury hotel with private homes above it. The hotel uses floors 2 to 31, and the condominium residences take floors 32 to 57, with four to six suites per floor. Residents have their own entrance and their own elevators, separate from hotel guests.

That split explains the numbers you will see. Building records show 379 units under TSCC-2279, and published figures for the tower describe 261 hotel rooms and 118 residential suites, which add up to exactly 379. The hotel rooms were sold as units too, so the corporation covers both, and the hotel portion has been owned by InnVest Hotels since 2017.

Before you buy, understand how costs and decisions are shared between the hotel and the residences. Ask for the declaration, any shared facilities agreement and the budget, and read how the residential owners are represented. That governance question is the single most important item on this building, more than finishes or view.

Zeidler’s tower and the spire on Bay Street

Zeidler Partnership Architects designed the tower, which is clad in steel, glass and stone and capped by a spire. It reaches about 277 metres to the tip and about 237 metres to the roof, and it was built on a former parking lot between Scotia Plaza and The National Club. Sources count its height differently: 65 storeys including mechanical levels, 57 occupied floors, and 61 floors on some listing sites.

The building opened to hotel guests in January 2012, with work on the top finished that July. It traded under the Trump name until 2017, operated briefly as The Adelaide Hotel during renovations, and joined Marriott’s St. Regis brand in November 2018. Building profiles list the property manager as a Marriott hotel company, which tells you how closely the residences are tied to the hotel operation.

One practical note: a connection to the PATH was planned and then dropped because of tunnelling costs. You are steps from the network, but you walk outside to reach it.

Suites, ceilings and how big they really are

The residences were designed with ceilings of roughly 11 to 13 feet, which is the feature you notice first. With only four to six suites on a floor, most have more than one exposure, and from floor 32 up you are above many of the surrounding office towers.

Sources disagree on size. One published description says suites start around 2,230 square feet, while listing data shows suites from about 570 square feet and one-plus-den plans on the market today. I cannot reconcile those two figures from public sources, so confirm the exact area from the declaration and a floor plan, not the listing headline.

Original launch prices started at about $1.2 million. Finishes are now more than a decade old, so expect variation from suite to suite depending on how much each owner has updated.

Living at Bay and Adelaide

This is the centre of the Financial District. Bank towers, law firms and the PATH are all around you, and Nathan Phillips Square, the Eaton Centre and King Street restaurants are an easy walk. If you work on Bay Street, your commute is an elevator and a crosswalk.

The flip side is that the area is quieter at night and on weekends than residential neighbourhoods, and everyday groceries mean a walk or a short trip. Construction cranes are a fact of life in the core. Transit, schools and Walk Score are in the automatic panel on this page.

For resale, the buyer pool is small. Few people want a $1.6 million suite with a $3,000 monthly fee, so suites here can take longer to sell than a standard downtown one-bedroom. That cuts both ways: patient buyers can sometimes negotiate, and sellers need to price realistically from day one. If you are buying, ask how long comparable residences sat before they sold, not just what they sold for.

What the St. Regis Residences cost

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $937 per square foot. Treat that figure with care, because it may blend hotel units and residences, and suite sizes are recorded unevenly. For residences, I would rather compare against sold data for suites of similar size and floor.

When I wrote this there were five suites for sale and four for rent. Asking prices ran from about $1.6 million to $1.95 million across one-plus-den and two-bedroom suites, with monthly fees of roughly $2,430 to $3,900 across those listings. Fees here are among the highest in the city in dollar terms, and parking is not on the list of inclusions.

A fee of $2,500 to $4,000 a month is a serious carrying cost, equal to a sizeable mortgage payment on its own. Ask what portion of the budget supports hotel-linked services, how fees have moved over the last five years, and what the reserve fund study forecasts. Ask me for the building sold report so you can see what residences have actually traded for.

Building specifications

Amenities at The St. Regis Residences

The listed condominium amenities are short and service-focused: concierge, security, guest suites and a business centre. The hotel has a large spa on its top floors, but resident access and pricing for hotel facilities should be confirmed in writing rather than assumed.

Jatin’s honest take on The St. Regis Residences

The St. Regis Residences — frequently asked questions

Looking at St. Lawrence, the Financial District and Downtown Yonge more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.