[PHOTO] Two Five Condominium shots

[rfmcdonald]

This construction site just west of Yonge once block north of Wellesley is for Five Condominiums, a planned 45 story condominium tower that will, as its boosters suggest, be a very prominent addition to the neighbourhood.



Once a Second Cup coffee shop, then a Lebanese pita restaurant, this location is now the presentation centre for Five Condominiums. This building, and the other buildings immediately to the south, will apparently remain, transformed into higher-end restaurant and shop spaces.

"I would love to put in the kind of uses, relating to food, that you see on Church Street, like Cumbrae's and Pusateri," says MOD Developments' president and CEO Gary Switzer, formerly of Great Gulf Homes, of the five buildings he's bought and will completely renovate and restore. "Yonge Street has a little Sobey's up the street, but with the number of people living in the area, it could support a good fruit store."

When it is suggested that the reason Yonge Street doesn't have a fruit store is that the rents are too high to make one feasible, Switzer says that he has the "flexibility" to modulate rents to attract the sorts of businesses he'd like to see there, and that would best serve the future residents of 5 St. Joseph.

"I've walked those blocks so many times," he says, "and the buildings themselves are quite nice individually, but because the retail is so bland and unappealing, it's not like you have any landmarks that you can say, 'Let's eat over here," or "Let's go over there.' I think it's getting better, but I think it needs a lot of work."