COMING TO KERRISDALE
Prime location, high-end touches to distinguish Cressey’s Sterling.
Cressey’s new development of 37 high-end apartments to be built in Kerrisdale is all about luxury, right down to the last detail. Sterling will be a fourstorey building covering a full city block at 49th Avenue and West Boulevard, with a level of commercial space on the ground floor.
“When we walked into the show suite, we were absolutely blown away,” said Glen Antonuk, who has bought a two- bedroom apartment on the top floor with his partner. “It was truly spectacular. The finishings are top-notch. It was by far the best thing we saw and it didn’t take us long at all to make a decision.”
Floor plans on offer at Sterling have two bedrooms, two bedrooms and a den or three bedrooms. Second-level homes on the west side of the building will have large terraces and views towards the water. Almost all the top level homes will have access to generous private rooftop patios, with built-in outdoor kitchens and options for fireplaces and hot tubs.
“The location was the No. 1 thing that attracted us to the site,” said Jason Turcotte, vicepresident of development at Cressey Development Group. “It’s a very desirable, primarily single-family area where people have generally been there for a long time.”
“A lot of our buyers are people who have been in that neighbourhood already,” Turcotte added. “We’re getting people who are downsizing out of a big home without wanting to compromise on the things they love about single-family living.”
For Cressey, that means including many of the key elements you would expect to find in a single-family home, like formal entryways, full-sized laundries with side-by-side washer dryers and powder rooms near the entrances. Living areas are extra-wide, and there is space in the master bedrooms for kingsized beds. Even the second bedrooms have walk-in closets.
But the main attraction for buyers of homes on the top floor will be the amount of outdoor space and the views of the west side. Certainly for Antonuk, that was a big draw.
“Aside from Cressey being the builder and the location, one of the biggest selling points for us was the rooftop patio,” he said. “We’re living in a house right now, so we knew we wanted some outdoor space. To have a thousand square feet above our suite with a west-facing view is going to be awesome.”
Inside, no matter which floor it’s on, every home will come with the type of fixtures and finishings you’d expect to find in a custom single-family home. The kitchens and the bathrooms are particular standouts, according to Turcotte.
“We’ve added a whole load of extra detailing in the bathrooms,” he said. “So you get wall-mounted fixtures, marble ledges that run all the way round the room, feature lighting and screw-free light switch plates. It’s all designed to add to the luxury esthetic.”
Master ensuite bathrooms come with floor-to-ceiling tile, free-standing soaker tubs, ceiling- mounted rain showers, heated flooring and private, frosted-glass toilet rooms.
But perhaps the most important room in the home is the kitchen and for the apartments at Sterling, Cressey is building its biggest ever.
“We expanded the kitchens in both directions so we could have space for a big five-by-five foot marble island,” Turcotte explains. “It is designed to be a very social space where people can gather round and enjoy each other’s company, while still having all the modern conveniences and extra storage you’d expect from a Cressey kitchen.”
Kitchens feature fully integrated appliance walls, pullout pantries, quartz backsplashes, under- cabinet lighting and built-in garbage and recycling units. The full-spectrum appliance packages include 36-inch Sub-Zero refrigerators, five-burner gas cooktops by Wolf and optional integrated wine fridges.
Other optional upgrades at Sterling include a home automation system that runs off an iPod mini to control lighting, heating and audio visual appliances.
For Antonuk, the sense of exclusivity is enhanced by the fact that there will be only 37 units in the building. It will also be in a quiet neighbourhood that is within walking distance of Kerrisdale village.
“We didn’t want to get into a big highrise tower with hundreds of units,” Antonuk said. “We like the fact that it’s a boutique building and we’ve lived in Kerrisdale before, so it really ticked all the boxes for us.”
Antonuk lives in Toronto, having been transferred there from Vancouver for work. He and his partner have since retired and are moving back to Vancouver. They intend to travel regularly, so their intention was to find a lock-and-leave situation in a building that has a concierge.
“We walked in there and we couldn’t believe it,” Antonuk added. “It’s a very simple layout, but it works extremely well and Cressey’s attention to detail is spectacular.”
Sterling is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2017.