The Berwick, 60 Berwick Ave: A Stepped Midrise With Heat and Parking In

The Berwick at 60 Berwick Avenue is the midrise I point people to when they want Yonge and Eglinton without living inside a 50-storey tower. It steps down toward the bungalows on Duplex Avenue, it is ten years old rather than brand new, and its fee covers heat, cooling, water and parking. That last detail changes how you should compare it with the glass towers a few blocks east. I’m Jatin Dua, RE/MAX Quantum Realty.

A tower that steps down to the street, not over it

The Berwick was designed by Page + Steele for The Brown Group and Andrin Homes, and its defining move is the stepped, terraced form. The building drops in height toward the east so it does not loom over the small houses on Duplex Avenue, and the upper floors sit on a three-storey base of precast concrete and yellow brick.

Critics were not overwhelmed. Christopher Hume, writing in Storeys in 2019, gave the project a C+, crediting the step-down and the brick base but arguing the base and the tower read like two different buildings. I mention that not to talk you out of it, but because nobody should buy here expecting architecture. You buy here for scale, terraces and a quieter street.

The step-backs are also where the outdoor space comes from. A terraced building produces suites with larger terraces on the setback floors, and those are the suites that hold value best in a building like this. If outdoor space matters to you, ask which floors sit at a step and how deep the terrace actually is.

The CityTowns on Duplex: the part most people miss

Wrapped around the base on Duplex Avenue is a curved row of townhomes the developers called CityTowns. Marketing material put them at about 1,830 to 2,170 square feet, with front doors on Duplex and direct access to the underground garage. Most were planned with a ground-floor patio, a mid-level balcony or a rooftop sky yard.

Hume called that row the best element of the whole complex, and I agree. A townhome with condo services, an elevator-free front door and a parking space below is a rare format this close to Yonge and Eglinton. Those units come up infrequently, so if you are a family that wants to stay in midtown without buying a detached house, set an alert and be ready.

The suite count is one place where sources disagree. Condos.ca lists 221 units, while UrbanToronto described 205 tower suites and 20 townhomes. The difference is small, but confirm the number on the status certificate, because it affects how costs are shared.

Layouts: mostly one-bedrooms with nine-foot ceilings

Tower suites were marketed from about 550 square feet to just over 1,000, and condos.ca records a full range of roughly 478 to 2,773 square feet once the townhomes and larger suites are counted. Listing profiles describe nine-foot ceilings, hardwood floors, granite counters and stainless appliances, which was a standard midtown package in 2015.

In practice the building trades mostly in one-bedroom and one-plus-den suites in the 500 to 700 square foot range. That matters for resale: there are plenty of comparables, but you are also competing with your neighbours when you sell. A two-bedroom or a terrace suite here is the scarcer product.

Landscape architect Terraplan designed a central green space within the site. It is not a park, but it gives the complex a shared outdoor area that many towers on the main streets lack.

West of Yonge, on a residential grid

The Berwick sits west of Yonge on a grid of houses and low buildings at the edge of Chaplin Estates. Day to day, that means quieter streets than you get on Eglinton or Yonge themselves, while the shops, restaurants and Yonge-Eglinton Centre remain an easy walk.

The trade-off is that midtown keeps growing around you. Yonge and Eglinton has been one of the busiest development areas in the city for more than a decade, and the blocks east of Duplex have seen tower after tower. A midrise on a side street will not stop that, but it does mean your own building is not the one adding the next 600 neighbours.

The scale also shows up in the lobby and elevators. A building of roughly 220 suites has a fraction of the move-ins, deliveries and visitors of the 400 to 600 suite towers on Eglinton and Roehampton, and buyers who have lived in one of those usually notice the difference within a week.

What The Berwick costs, and what the fee includes

Condos.ca puts the building average at about $917 per square foot. That is a solid number for a ten-year-old midrise, and it reflects the side-street location and the fee structure rather than anything flashy about the building.

At the time of writing there were three active listings, all one-bedrooms between about 500 and 699 square feet, asking from $510,000 to $655,000. Their fees worked out to about $0.84 per square foot on average, roughly $520 to $545 a month.

That fee covers heat, air conditioning, water, building insurance and parking as well as common elements. Many newer towers at Yonge and Eglinton meter heating and cooling to each suite and charge parking separately, so a lower fee per square foot there is not automatically cheaper. Add your own heating, cooling and parking costs back to the other building before you compare.

For a precise read on recent resale prices rather than asking prices, see the automatic data panel on this page or request my building sold report.

Building specifications

Amenities at The Berwick

There is no pool, which keeps the operating cost down. What you get is a concierge, a gym with a sauna and yoga room, a party room and media room, guest suites and an outdoor patio with barbecues, which is the right package for a building of about 220 households that mostly want quiet rather than a resort.

Jatin’s honest take on The Berwick

The Berwick — 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.