Yorkville, and then some
LUXE NEW W HOTEL OPENS IN A COVETED DISTRICT WITH EVER-EXPANDING BOUNDARIES
To the people who know the district well, Yorkville is a vibe — and the new W Hotel on Bloor Street has it. “The Bloor/yorkville brand is in lockstep with everything that W represents,” Craig Reaume, general manager for the W Toronto.
The chic lobby features pulsing music, a champagne vending machine and a recording studio for travelling artists and content creators. Take the sleek glass elevator to your room and you’ll find complimentary bottles of Hennessy, Casamigos Tequila, Empress 1908 Indigo Gin and Belvedere Vodka, along with a small handbook to create cocktails from your room.
The upscale chic hotel is Yorkville lavish: “It dovetails perfectly with Yorkville always being at the forefront of great culture,” he said.
But the W is technically not in Yorkville — it is just to the east of Yonge Street, once considered Yorkville’s eastern boundary.
When it first emerged as a hot district, Yorkville was bohemian. Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Margaret Atwood and Joni Mitchell made it the hub of Canada’s hippie movement in the 1960s.
Today, Yorkville’s high-end boutiques form a prestigious shopping district that separates itself from the rest of the city and draws the rich, famous and fabulous. Toronto media outlets reported this month on the 11-year-old boy who met both Drake (out for dinner in his hometown) and Adam Sandler (in town filming a movie) in the district just 30 minutes apart.
For Torontonians unfamiliar with the area, the traditional Yorkville perimeter is Avenue Road to Yonge and Bloor to Davenport Road. But it’s expanding rapidly, especially towards east of Church.
There are multiple construction sites inside and adjacent to the district, and there’s a distinct trend of developers trying to market their construction as “Yorkville” even if it is arguably well outside the neighbourhood.
Luxury condos on Bloor as far east as Sherbourne Street and even Parliament Street have been described as Yorkville in some marketing materials. James Milonas, one of Toronto’s most popular luxury real estate agents, says there’s a couple of condos that claim to be Yorkville but are simply not. Though rather close in proximity, they are in the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood.
He mentions one project on Charles Street.
“It’s not Yorkville and should not be marketed as such,” said Milonas in an interview.
“For example, I would not tell my clients that are looking along Charles that they’re buying in Yorkville, but I would remind them it’s only a six-minute walk down the street from Yorkville,” he said.
The eastward expansion sees the idea of Yorkville grow into an area that’s been neglected for many years. Although it’s not historically Yorkville, Milonas thinks it offers a good opportunity for it to be rejuvenated with life and innovation.
Prentiss Dantzler, a community development expert at the University of Toronto, suggests the original parameters of Yorkville were highly exclusive. That made it more attractive and, ironically, prompted people to want to get in on it — even if that meant the neighbourhood had to expand, making it less exclusive.
“That’s why you see a lot of the big highrises going there (to the east), because there’s not a lot of competition and not a lot of space for other people to build as well,” Dantzler said in an interview.
To be sure, the W is not really a Yorkville pretender. It’s west of Church — fully within the stretched boundaries of Yorkville as currently understood, even as those boundaries spread further.
It is the W chain’s second hotel in Canada; the first opened in Montreal in 2004.
Milonas loves all the change, bringing newer condos and restaurants.
“It’s nice to see Yorkville changing, because for a long time it was very 1980s,” he said. “You’ll start to see more businesses and developers market themselves as ‘in Yorkville’ for the cachet.”