Yorkville Plaza, 188 Cumberland St: Living in the Old Four Seasons Hotel

Yorkville Plaza is a building with a past. For forty years, 21 Avenue Road was a hotel, first the Hyatt Regency and then, for more than three decades, the Four Seasons, before Camrost Felcorp gutted it and rebuilt it as condominiums. What you get today is a hotel-sized address with compact suites, and you need to buy it for what it is. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

From Hyatt to Four Seasons to condos

The tower at 21 Avenue Road opened in March 1972 as the Hyatt Regency, designed by Webb Zerafa Menkes with Boris Zerafa as lead architect. Four Seasons took over the hotel in 1978, cut the room count from 540 to 380, and ran it until the hotel closed in March 2012.

Camrost Felcorp bought the building in 2011 and hired WZMH, the original architects, to turn it into residences. The tower kept its basic shape and structure, gained a two-storey glass podium in place of the old concrete base, and was re-clad in new glass; the architects described patterns of opaque and transparent enamelled glass that change the building’s look between day and night.

The old ballroom wing on Avenue Road was demolished for a new taller tower, and a lower wing went up on Yorkville Avenue, so the whole site is now a complex of buildings under the Yorkville Plaza name. That matters when you buy, because each part has its own corporation and its own budget.

Which tower is this, exactly?

The listing records for this corporation use both 188 Cumberland Street and 21 Avenue Road, and the suite sizes, from about 370 to 750 sq ft, line up with the pied-à-terre, one- and two-bedroom suites that the converted hotel tower was marketed with. Urban Toronto describes that converted tower as 31 storeys; condos.ca lists 32 floors and 490 suites.

There is also a separate corporation listed at 155 Yorkville Avenue, the Residences of Yorkville Plaza, registered in 2017. Public sources do not line up neatly on which address is which tower, so before you write an offer, confirm in the status certificate exactly which building and which corporation the suite belongs to, and which shared facilities it has rights to.

Hotel bones, compact suites

A hotel floor plate is built around a central corridor with rooms on both sides, and that shapes the suites here. Expect efficient, narrow plans, many of them studios and one-bedrooms; check whether a bedroom has its own window or relies on sliding walls and borrowed light. The original structure is concrete, which generally helps with sound between floors, but ask owners how it performs.

These suites suit a particular buyer: someone who wants a city base rather than a family home, or an investor targeting tenants who will pay for the address. If you need storage, a second bedroom with a real window, or room for a dining table, look at the larger end of the size range or at a different building.

One listing I saw was far outside this building’s usual size and price band, which can happen with combined suites. If you see something like that, ask for the floor plan and the registered unit description before you compare it to anything else.

Parking and lockers are not listed in the fee, and in a building of this many compact suites, many units will not have either. If you need a space, confirm whether it is owned or leased and what it costs each month before you firm up.

Avenue and Cumberland, every day

The address is the point. You are at the western gate of Yorkville, with the Bloor Street shops, the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto all walkable; subway access and nearby restaurants are in the data panel on this page.

The block around you is dense and still changing. Minto Yorkville Park, the Maxus and 8 Cumberland are all along Cumberland Street, and towers keep rising along Avenue Road and Bloor. Ask what each suite faces and whether anything nearby is still under construction.

Living at the edge of Yorkville also means living with its crowds. Weekends, festival season and film-festival week bring a lot of people and cars to Avenue Road and Cumberland. For many owners that energy is the reason they bought; if you want quiet, look at a higher floor on the side facing away from the avenue.

Pricing: the address at a small-suite price

Yorkville Plaza averages about $1,107 per square foot on condos.ca. That is in line with the newer Yorkville towers, such as 8 Cumberland at about $1,170 and 1 Yorkville at about $1,145, and well above the older Maxus at about $914. You are paying a modern-tower price per foot for a rebuilt 1970s structure.

When I checked, two suites were for sale, asking between about $485,000 and $1,526,000, with monthly fees from about $628 to about $2,002. The higher listing is far outside the usual size band, so the realistic entry point here is a compact one-bedroom in the high-$400,000s to low-$500,000s range, based on what was on the market.

Fees on the small suites are not cheap for their size. The fee includes common elements, insurance and water only, so add hydro, heating and cooling, and any parking, when you compare. Two listings is not a market; the sold and leased medians in the data panel are the better guide.

Building specifications

Amenities at Yorkville Plaza Condos

An indoor pool, gym, party room and concierge is a solid package for a building of compact suites, and the pool in particular is something many newer Yorkville towers do not have. Confirm which pool and gym this corporation’s owners use, since the complex has several buildings.

Jatin’s honest take on Yorkville Plaza Condos

Yorkville Plaza 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.