Video Interview – TalkCondo Discuss Home Condos with Christopher Wein
- Amit Bhandari of TalkCondo interviews Christopher Wein, the president of Great Gulf Homes – one of Toronto’s top condo developers ahead of the launch for Home Condos at Power & Adelaide
- Wein highlights Great Gulf’s incredible track record of pioneering new neighbourhoods by entering markets before any developer
- Great Gulf were the first major developer in the Entertainment District, Bloor & Jarvis, Dundas & Jarvis an the East Bayfront
- Wein highlights the huge potential of East Downtown and highlights why it is an emerging area that investors should pay attention to
- What makes Home Condos a great project
- How you can get front of line access to Home Condos at the brand new launch coming soon
Transcript:
Amit Bhandari: Hi everyone. This is Amit Bhandari of talkcondo.com, and I’ll like to introduce you to a very special guest today we have the president of Great Gulf. Christopher Wein. Christopher, I know you’ve got a crazy schedule for so thank you so much for taking the time out today.
Christopher Wein: You’re very welcome, happy to be here.
Amit: Thank you. So, Christopher, just jumping right into it, Great Gulf, huge name in the industry, you guys won obviously numerous of awards – never ending line there. What is it that makes Great Gulf, Great Gulf?
Christopher: Sure, I will tell you a bit of the history, so it was started 40 years ago, it’s a private company. The individuals who founded the company. Still own it today and they’ve always believed in building better communities, building better houses. We started out as a home builder and we have evolved into high rise construction, we build whole communities we do retail, we do office. You name it were involved in it and we really believe in being innovative and really trying to create the best product we can and always searching out you know better ways to construct, better ways to design and really trying to be one of the leading builders in city.
Amit: Perfect. And such a great honour to be working with Great Gulf. So what I wanted to talk about next was just based on the innovation as well and sort of how you pick sites with noticed time and time again across the GTA but Toronto specifically where Great Gulf have been like the Pioneer developer – the Hudson at King & Spadina being one, X1 and X2 at Bloor East and Church, and then you have Pace Condominiums – you sort of entering these neighbourhoods before there even anything before, sometimes even before any of the developers have even caught wind you know – or even enter the market and then even more recently is the East Bayfront where Monde was the first anything, in that neighbourhood. So, could you talk to a little bit is that by design or could you talk by, you know.
Christopher: Sure, it is by design something that we really like to look at you know a number of different factors but a big part of what we look at is the demographics of the city and we really like to study demographics and study you know basically the way neighbourhoods and populations are changing, and Toronto, you know we love Toronto because one of the most diverse cities in the world.
And it’s amazing that through growth you get these neighbourhoods that start to gentrify or start to transition and we you know as a developer it’s really important for us to try and help these communities develop for the future. So, it’s easy to pick spots, you know that are already full of development but you know we prefer to be a little more pioneering and you know we’re not averse to risk. And that’s been a big part of our success and we really believe in studying, you know the flows of people in traffic and business and understanding where the next sort of hot spots are going to be and as you mentioned we’ve had a lot of success in a lot of our areas, our focus now is we put a lot of focus on the east side of Toronto, we believe heavily, that the east is in some ways the new west, so we continue to develop on the west side and have had a lot of success there but we believe that you know the real opportunities for future neighbourhoods is the east side of downtown.
Amit: I was actually just going to touch on that. So, what is it about the east side, so east of Yonge and in some cases, east of the DVP that makes it so compelling. What is it that’s compelling to Great Gulf?
Christopher: Sure, you know we look at a number of things I think certainly you know one of things we always want to focus on is transit and understanding how people get around the city, and when you look at you know the fact that you’ve got the Don Valley Parkway on the east side, the Gardiner Expressway and so on, you’ve also got you know incredible recreation facilities with respect to the ravine system and some of the new parks that have come up like Corktown Comments and so on it. To us is kind of obvious that the east side, you know has a lot of development opportunity, a lot of growth opportunity, and you know that’s an area that we decided to concentrate on several years ago.
We’ve done some office development there with the Globe & Mail Center and the Coca-Cola headquarters and will continue to try to expand that neighborhood both commercially as well as residentially. But I think you know I think that the east side can really offer a new perspective, for buyers in the marketplace, it has in my mind all the advantages of the west side plus. So it’s got those advantages but it’s also got the Don Valley Parkway. It’s also got very easy access to the Lakeshore. Like the Lakeshore on the east side is actually got more development potential and we’ve recently bought some more sites down on the on the waterfront, so I think that whole area with what happened with the PanAm Games and so on in the Distillery District you’re just going to continue to see a huge amount of development happen there.
Amit: Very exciting and of course there is the Unilever site that was purchased just a couple years ago.
Christopher: Yes. So, that’s you know we’re not ready to talk about the future like that, of course, but I think between that and what’s happening in the Portland, there’s going to be a lot of excitement throughout that area for the next generation.
Amit: So, excited. Yeah! So, it’s amazing just to see the general growth and how and. And the general trends. How cities grow and how, I mean we’ve seen it in other parts of the world London for instance we saw how the city grew outwards and it’s amazing to see how Toronto has just fall in the same. Yes! progressive pattern known as a lot of cities across the globe those followed. So just going back to the east side again. The next site, the another site the Great Gulf have is the Power & Adelaide site. Is there anything that you could tell us about that site.
Christopher: Sure. So, at this moment we have been we spent the last year in design development to do about a 500 unit condominium project there it’ll be a mixed use project so the extensive retail on the first 2 floors and we really hope that and believe that there’s demand for some larger retail in the area, there’s been a lot of recent development residentially in that area including the PanAm village, and so you know our hope would be perhaps a major grocery store to take up a lot of the retail in the base of that building but what’s beautiful about it is we are on a park so Orphan Green is right across our street from us and we’re going to assist the city to try and improve that park you know addition to that as part of our site, we’re also going to create a park opposite Orphan. So, we’re going to dedicate a portion of our site to a brand-new park that we’re going to create and then gift back to the city but then above that those beautiful retail pavilions will be about 500 plus units of condominiums – it’s a 2-tower project with a beautiful amenity deck. It’s actually we have amenities open to both sides in between the towers so you’ll have views from the west all the way around to the east, we’re going to have gorgeous views of the skyline from that amenity desk so every resident in the building can enjoy it. And you’re also going to get great sunsets and sunrises so we’re pretty excited about the project.
Amit: So, very, very cool projects. Absolutely! So, I guess my next question just to follow on from that is if anybody is interested in and pursuing something at your next development what would they, what they need to do?
Christopher: Yes, So, we’re calling the development Home because we really believe that the east side is a neighbourhood that you can call home, I think it’s a fantastic place to live as I said before it offers all the amenities, and services that you would want in a home and so if you’re interested in Home at Power & Adelaide, we will be coming out of market shortly, so we anticipate launching into the marketplace within the next few weeks, and we will be working extensively with the broker community, so if you are working with a broker currently – your best is to reach out to them and they will have all the information that they need to get in early and be one of the first to buy which we always recommend. If you are investing in condominiums, it’s always best to get in as early as you can
Amit: Wonderful thank you so much. You’re welcome.
