Nicholas Residences, 75 St Nicholas St: A Rebuilt Mill on a Cobbled Lane

Nicholas Residences is the building I show buyers who want to live a few minutes from Yorkville without paying Yorkville prices, and who care what the front door looks like. Urban Capital took apart the old brick planing mill on the site, cleaned the bricks and put them back up as the base of a 35-storey glass tower. The street itself is a cobblestoned lane most Torontonians have never walked down. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A planing mill taken apart and put back together

The base of this building is the reason most people remember it. An old planing mill stood on the south end of the site, and rather than knock it down and keep a sliver of facade, the builders dismantled it, cleaned the bricks and rebuilt the mill’s exterior as part of the podium. Where original bricks could not be saved, custom-made new ones were mixed in, and the window frames were specified to match the originals.

Next to the rebuilt mill, the newer part of the podium uses a redder brick and a glass corner, so you can read old and new side by side. Above it rises the tower. Early marketing described a 29-storey building; what was actually built is 35 storeys, which is what UrbanToronto reported during construction and what building records show.

Core Architects designed it for Urban Capital and its partner ALIT. The result looks deliberate from the street rather than generic, which helps resale in a part of town full of glass towers.

The street is the amenity

St Nicholas Street is a narrow, tree-lined, cobblestoned lane from the 19th century, tucked between Yonge and Bay. It carries very little traffic. You get the quiet of a side street while Yonge Street, with everything it offers, is around the corner.

Walk north and you are into Bloor-Yorkville’s shops and restaurants within a few minutes. Walk south and you are in the Church-Wellesley and Bay Street corridors. Transit, schools and Walk Score are in the automatic panel on this page.

The trade-off is that this is a dense pocket of towers, with more under construction nearby, so some views are not permanent. Before you buy a mid-floor suite, look at what is approved or proposed on the neighbouring lots and ask which direction the suite faces.

Retro lobby, a second-floor club and a reflecting pool terrace

Cecconi Simone did the interiors. The two-storey lobby was designed with a 1960s retro-modern feel, which gives the building more character than the usual marble-and-chrome entrance. Concierge sits in that lobby.

Almost the entire second floor is shared space: a gym, a lounge, a theatre and a billiards room. Building listings also show a party room, a meeting room and a media room. The standout is the outdoor terrace on top of the podium, laid out around a long, shallow reflecting pool with small bridges across it, and facing south and east over Yonge Street and the core.

Note that the pool on the terrace is decorative, not for swimming. If a swimming pool matters to you, this is not your building, and I would rather you know that before you book a showing.

Small suites, so choose the plan carefully

Suites run from about 325 square feet to roughly 1,103 square feet. The building leans heavily toward studios and one-bedrooms. Every suite for sale when I wrote this was a one-bedroom, most in the 500 to 599 square foot band.

In suites this size, the floor plan matters more than the finishes. Look for a bedroom with a proper window rather than a sliding-door alcove, a kitchen wall long enough to hold a full-size fridge, and a balcony you would actually use. Two units of identical square footage can live very differently here.

Larger plans of 700 square feet and up exist but come up less often. If you need a true two-bedroom, be ready to wait for the right listing, or look at it as a sign this building is better suited to singles, couples and investors.

Light and outlook change a great deal from one stack to the next here, so stand in the suite at the time of day you would actually be home. A west-facing one-bedroom on a mid floor and an east-facing one higher up can be priced closely and feel nothing alike, and the podium terrace is visible from many lower suites, which some buyers love and others find a little public.

What Nicholas Residences costs

The building averages about $910 per square foot on condos.ca. That sits at the higher end for a 2015 tower of mostly small suites, and it reflects the address near Yorkville and the design of the building rather than suite size.

When I wrote this, there were five suites for sale and two for rent. Four of the one-bedrooms in the 500 to 599 square foot band were asking from about $399,000 to $560,000, with monthly fees of roughly $545 to $675 across them. One larger listing was asking far more, so treat it as an outlier and check what is included. Fees across active listings work out to about $0.99 per square foot.

That fee looks high next to some newer towers. Part of the answer is that heat, cooling and water are included, so your own utility bill is smaller. Even so, compare the total monthly cost with the buildings you are weighing up, and ask me for the building sold report before you settle on a number.

Building specifications

Amenities at Nicholas Residences

The amenity package is about lounging and entertaining rather than fitness or swimming: a full second floor of shared rooms plus a landscaped terrace that works well on summer evenings. For residents in 400 to 600 square foot suites, that extra space is the real value.

Jatin’s honest take on Nicholas Residences

Nicholas 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.