Eglinton Hunt Club, 1111 Avenue Rd: 21 Lofts in a Heritage Clubhouse

The Eglinton Hunt Club at 1111 Avenue Road is probably the most storied small condo in midtown. It was a riding club’s clubhouse, then a secret wartime research station for the air force, and it is now 21 large loft suites behind brick walls just north of Eglinton. Buildings like this rarely come up, and when they do, the history should not distract you from the homework. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A riding club, an air force lab, then 21 homes

The Eglinton Hunt Club started in 1919, when a member of the Toronto Hunt set up a large equestrian facility on what was then rural land northeast of Avenue Road and Eglinton. The site had a polo arena and a clubhouse, and the Architectural Conservancy Ontario lists the clubhouse as completed in 1929 to designs by Bryan and Vaux Chadwick.

The club struggled financially in the 1930s, and in 1939 the federal government bought the property. It became a secret Royal Canadian Air Force research facility, and it is where Frederick Banting worked on the medical side of combat flying and Wilbur Franks developed the anti-gravity flight suit. After the war it housed RCAF auxiliary squadrons and later a military school.

In 1995 the property was transferred to the separate school board, and a Catholic secondary school was built on part of the site in 1998. The clubhouse itself was kept and converted into condominium suites, and the corporation was registered in 2005. The ACO lists it on the City of Toronto’s heritage inventory.

What the conversion kept

This is not a glass box with a heritage facade glued on. Condos.ca describes vaulted ceilings, original brick masonry and period lighting carried through the conversion, and a suite profiled by Toronto Life had ceilings of about 13 feet. Condos.ca describes the conversion as townhomes rather than apartments, so ask how each suite is laid out over the building’s two storeys.

Sizes run from about 986 to 2,005 square feet, which puts most suites in the range of a generous two-bedroom or a small house. With only 21 suites in a two-storey building, there are no long corridors and very few shared walls compared with a tower.

The other side of heritage is constraint. Windows, exterior walls and some interior features may be protected or simply expensive to change. If you are planning a renovation, find out what the corporation and the heritage status allow before you buy, not after.

The fee, and what is not in it

The fee here covers common elements, building insurance, water and parking. Heat and hydro are not listed, so in a suite with 13-foot ceilings and old masonry walls, budget for heating and cooling as you would in a house, and ask the seller for a year of utility bills.

Parking is included in the fee, and the suite Toronto Life profiled came with two spaces, which is unusual in midtown. Do not assume every suite has two; confirm the parking and locker entitlements of the specific unit in the status certificate.

Condos.ca lists a pet restriction among the building’s features. I could not find the details, so read the declaration and rules before you buy if you have a dog or more than one pet.

Daily life at Avenue Road and Eglinton

The address sits on Avenue Road just north of Eglinton, on the edge of the midtown residential streets that run toward Forest Hill and Lytton Park. You are close to the shops on Eglinton West and Yonge Street, and the Eglinton subway and the Line 5 Eglinton corridor are part of daily life here; the data panel on this page has the transit and school detail.

Avenue Road is a busy arterial, so ask which way a suite faces and how much traffic noise reaches it, especially with original windows. A suite that faces the interior of the site will live very differently from one on the road.

Around you, the corridor along Eglinton is changing with new mid-rise and tower projects. The clubhouse itself is not going anywhere, which is one of the reassuring things about owning a heritage building in a district full of construction.

Pricing: a heritage building at a lower per-foot price

Condos.ca puts the average at about $743 per square foot, the lowest of the small loft buildings I follow in this part of midtown. St George on Sheldrake averages about $1,062, SoHo Lofts on Eglinton East about $817 and The Metro on Merton Street about $903. Part of the gap is the fee structure, since heat and hydro are on you here, and part is the age of the building and the size of the suites.

With 21 suites, sales are rare and every sale is a one-off. There were no suites for sale or rent when I checked, so I cannot give you a current asking range. A per-foot average in a building this small can swing a lot on one sale, so use it as a rough guide, not a valuation.

If you are serious about this building, set up an alert and look at the sold and leased medians in the data panel or my building sold report. When something comes up, compare it with houses and semis nearby as well as condos, because that is the real alternative for most buyers here.

Building specifications

Amenities at Eglinton Hunt Club

There is a gym, a party and meeting room, an elevator and a security system, which is a fuller list than most buildings this small. The real draw, though, is the suite itself and the history of the building around it.

Jatin’s honest take on Eglinton Hunt Club

Eglinton Hunt Club — frequently asked questions

Looking at Yonge & Eglinton, Davisville and North Toronto more broadly? Start with my Toronto community guide — the neighbourhoods, what each pocket is like, and how they compare.