Park Palace, 8 Pemberton Ave: Small Suites With Hydro in the Fee

Park Palace at 8 Pemberton Avenue is the first of three related towers on a short street just north of Yonge and Finch, and it has the smallest suites of the set. Suites start under 500 square feet, and the fee covers hydro, heat, water and parking, which is rare. With a 30-year-old building, the question is never the fee alone. It is what the fee will need to become. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

The first of three Park Palace towers on Pemberton

Pemberton Avenue holds three related condominiums: Park Palace at 8, Park Palace II at 18 and Park Palace III at 28. All three were completed in 1996, registered within about five months of each other and list the same property manager. This one registered first, in April 1996, as MTCC-1119.

They are separate corporations, though, and that matters more than the shared name. Each has its own board, budget, reserve fund and rules. A healthy reserve fund next door does nothing for you here, so judge this corporation on its own documents.

At 14 storeys and 148 suites, 8 Pemberton is the tallest and largest of the three. Neither condos.ca nor any source I could find names the developer or the architect, so I will not guess. What the building shows instead is a familiar mid-1990s North York formula: a modest tower, a concierge and a fee that covers almost everything.

The smallest suites on the street

Condos.ca puts suites here at about 482 to 951 square feet. That is a tighter range than at 18 or 28 Pemberton, where plans run past 1,200 and 1,300 square feet. In practice, this is a building of one-bedrooms and compact two-bedrooms, with very little that would suit a family that needs room.

That makes it a natural first purchase, or a city base for someone who spends part of the year elsewhere. It also means you will be competing with investors when you buy, because small suites near Yonge and Finch rent easily.

Plans from the mid-1990s were often laid out more generously than today’s at the same square footage, with a proper dining area or an enclosed kitchen. Older does not mean worse, but it does mean condition varies a lot from suite to suite. Price any original kitchen, bathroom and flooring into your offer.

I could not confirm ceiling heights or balcony details from a reliable source. Check both on the tour rather than relying on a listing description.

Hydro in the fee: the upside and the risk

The fee list on condos.ca includes air conditioning, common elements, heat, hydro, building insurance, parking and water. Hydro is the unusual one. Most newer towers meter each suite, so here the last large utility bill is already inside your monthly payment.

That changes how you compare buildings. A fee that looks high next to a newer Yonge and Finch tower is replacing a hydro bill, a heating bill and a parking charge. Add those back onto the other building before you decide which one is cheaper to own.

The trade-off is that light users subsidise heavy users, and the corporation carries the risk when energy prices rise. If the board ever moves to suite metering, that is a capital project with its own cost. Ask whether it has been discussed, and look at how utility costs have moved in the last few budgets.

Living just north of Yonge and Finch

Pemberton is a short side street off Yonge just north of Finch. You are close to the end of Line 1 and the Finch bus terminal without facing Yonge itself, which keeps the street quieter than the main road. The panel on this page shows the exact stations, schools, parks and restaurants nearby.

The area around you is changing. On the old Newtonbrook Plaza site just north of Yonge and Finch, Aoyuan Property Group’s M2M project was planned as an 8.6-acre community with condo towers, a new park and, in a later phase, a City-run community centre and daycare. When blogTO reported on it in 2020, demolition was done and the first phase was underway.

On Yonge itself, the City’s Transform Yonge plan for the stretch between Sheppard and Finch includes wider sidewalks, cycle tracks and a northbound bus lane from the Finch bus terminal. The 2020 design is being reassessed, with findings expected in early 2027, and no construction dates are set. Expect road work in the area at some point in the next several years.

What Park Palace costs per square foot

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $585 per square foot. That is higher than at Park Palace III next door, at about $510, which is what you would expect: smaller suites usually cost more per foot, even on the same street and in the same vintage.

There were no suites for sale when I checked, and one for rent. With no current asking prices to compare, the recent sales in the data panel above are your best guide, and I would lean on the aggregate figures there rather than on any one result.

For fee context, the two suites for sale at Park Palace II at 18 Pemberton, both in the 500 to 599 square foot band, carry fees of about $640 a month, roughly $1.16 per square foot, with hydro, heat and parking included. I would expect similar-sized suites here to sit in the same territory, but confirm the actual fee and its recent increases in the status certificate.

Building specifications

Amenities at Park Palace

Condos.ca lists a concierge, a security guard and system, a sauna, visitor parking and an underground garage. It is a modest package, which keeps the cost of running it modest too. If a gym or pool matters to you, confirm what is actually on site during a tour.

Jatin’s honest take on Park Palace

Park Palace — frequently asked questions

Looking at Willowdale, Yonge & Sheppard, Bayview Village and North York Centre more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.