Palace Pier: Toronto's luxury highrises then and now
September 04, 2015
Palace Pier, built in 1978, is Toronto's original luxury highrise condominium, and remains the oldest tower building in the Mimico area. While now reasonably priced in the $400,000s with huge floorplans (think $475,000 for 1,200 sq. ft.), the condo remains expensive because of the maintenance fees and all the amenity extras. Built on the historic site of the Palace Pier amusement park (which burned down in 1963), the condo arguably kickstarted the luxury highrise movement that is so prevalent in today's Toronto real estate market.
And although Palace Pier's sister building, Palace Place, turns 25 in 2016, we thought it would be interesting to compare the Palace Pier condos to two recently built luxury condos. With a private restaurant, spa, car wash station, games room in the sky and more, it's hard to beat these original luxury towers.
Together with Marina Del Ray, Palace Pier helps bookend what is now a booming Etobicoke Lakeshore condo strip.
Do the amenities and prices for downtown Toronto units, considering the square footage, measure up to the bar set long ago by these Etobicoke Waterfront condos? Palace Pier units range in size, but most are between 800 and more than 1,900 sq. ft. Compared to condo sizes in the city core, which continue to shrink, these units along the Lakeshore strip are huge.
CASA condos by Cresford Developments has three buildings in its series, and floorplans for each type of unit have consistently gotten smaller over time. For instance, a two-bedroom in the original CASA building averages between 749 and 950 sq. ft., whereas the only two-bedroom floorplan in CASA III – excluding the penthouses, of course – is just 690 sq. ft.
Aura at College Park by Canderel, on the other hand, offers two-bedroom plans from 776 to more than 1,000 sq. ft., but the catch is that in some floorplans, one of the bedrooms does not have a window.
In this case, owning a newer luxury condo almost always presents some sort of compromise in living space. Of course, the location needs to be factored in as well, but there's nothing like the whole package. Now let's compare some of the amenities in the newer and older buildings:
Gym
Photo credit: Palace Pier
What do you think of the amenities in today's brand new downtown condos, as opposed to one of Toronto's oldest luxury condo on the lake? Do you prefer newer or older real estate? We think Palace Pier still gives some of today's most cutting edge condos a run for their money!
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About Taylor Stinson
Taylor Stinson is a freelance writer, aspiring photographer and Master of Journalism student at Ryerson University. Her areas of expertise involve anything lifestyle--including food styling and home decor--and she loves to dabble in all things social media. Follow her here.