Foundry Lofts, 1100 Lansdowne Ave: A Hard Loft Built Around an Atrium

Foundry Lofts is the building I suggest when a buyer wants a real hard loft but the King West and Liberty Village prices are out of reach. It is a converted Canada Foundry works with a four-storey skylit atrium running down the middle, a strong residents’ community, and one of the more generous fee inclusion lists in the west end. The trade-off is a location that is still filling in. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

Eighty years of iron and steel

The Canada Foundry Company moved to this site in 1903 and spent nearly 80 years making steel and iron products here, including locomotives. The building at 1100 Lansdowne is one of the surviving structures from that works, and it is now a protected heritage site.

That history is why the suites look the way they do. These are true hard lofts inside an industrial shell, lit mostly by the original large warehouse windows, rather than a new building styled to look like one.

It is also why the building is so deep. A foundry building was designed around heavy production, not light and air for homes, and the developer had to solve the problem of what to do with a very wide floor.

Heritage protection cuts both ways for an owner. It keeps the building’s character safe from a future board that wants to modernise the exterior, but it can also make repairs to the old shell slower and more costly, because the work has to respect the original materials.

The atrium is the building

E-Park’s answer was to leave the middle open. A four-storey atrium runs through the whole building, with original skylights overhead, and suite doors open onto walkways around its edge. Loft guides describe it as about 16,000 sq ft, with trees, benches and cobblestone paths.

Inside the atrium sits a small brick structure, like a house built inside the warehouse. It holds the board room, the exercise room and the party room, which residents use for gatherings and rehearsals. That is unusual, and it gives the building a sense of community that most condos never have.

There is a cost to that openness. Doors and some interior windows face a shared space, so privacy depends on window treatments and on your neighbours. Some reviewers suggest the walls between suites are fairly thin. Visit at different times of day and listen before you commit.

Layouts from studio to very large

Suites range from about 535 sq ft to nearly 2,500 sq ft, so this is not a one-size building. Many plans are multi-level with mezzanine bedrooms open to the living space below, which is classic loft living but not for everyone. An open mezzanine bedroom is lovely for a couple and harder for roommates or anyone who works night shifts.

Sources disagree slightly on the count. Condos.ca lists 104 suites and three storeys, while a loft guide lists 101 lofts and three and a half storeys. The difference probably comes from how the mezzanine levels and the smallest units are counted, but check the registered plan if it matters to you.

Expect finishes to vary. After nearly two decades, some owners will have renovated and others will not, so two suites of the same size can be very different inside. Price the renovation into your offer, not just the square footage.

Lansdowne and Davenport, still changing

This pocket is mostly single-family houses, which is not where you would expect a 104-suite loft. The old foundry lands around the building have been redeveloped with townhouses, and further east the Galleria Mall site at Dufferin and Dupont is being rebuilt by ELAD Canada as Galleria on the Park, a large mixed-use project with new parkland.

Parking is one of the strengths here. The building has a garage and visitor parking, and parking is in the fee, which matters in an area where many people still drive for groceries. Loft guides that know the building single out the amount of parking as a plus.

Retail within a few steps of the door is still limited, and that is the honest weakness here. Corso Italia on St. Clair West and the shops along Dufferin are close, and the transit details are in the panel on this page.

For a buyer, the point is that the neighbourhood is on the way up rather than finished. You get more space for the money than in the established loft districts, in exchange for fewer shops on your doorstep today.

Price per square foot, and a fee that covers a lot

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $734 per square foot. That is the lowest of the nearby hard lofts I compare it with. Iron Works Lofts on Chandos Avenue averages around $878 and Wallace Station Lofts about $907. If you want authentic loft space, this is where your money stretches furthest.

The fee is easy to misread. Heat, air conditioning, water and parking are all included, along with insurance and common elements. In a large open loft with high ceilings, heating and cooling can be a serious bill, so having them in the fee makes your monthly cost more predictable. Compare buildings on what you actually pay each month, not the fee alone.

With 104 suites, Foundry trades often enough that there are real comparables, which is not true of the tiny lofts nearby. That makes it easier to judge whether a specific asking price is fair, and easier to sell later.

At the time of writing there were two suites for sale and one for rent. The listings were asking between $525,900 and $2,598,000, with fees between $615 and $1,996 a month. That spread shows how varied the suites are, so do not use the building average to price a specific unit.

Building specifications

Amenities at Foundry Lofts

The atrium is the real amenity. The gym and party room are small and sit inside the brick structure in the middle of the atrium, but that shared space is where residents actually meet, and it is the reason people choose this building over a standard condo.

Jatin’s honest take on Foundry Lofts

Foundry Lofts — frequently asked questions

Looking at the Junction, Corso Italia, Hillcrest Village and west-central Toronto more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.