It’s confounding that so many Toronto condo projects are given such unfortunate names that have nothing to do with this city or this geography. Like The Malibu at Lakeshore and Bathurst, “Toronto’s first California condo” (which I mentioned in a Toronto Flaneur column three Spacing’s ago). The reference takes us out of the local, and throws us to California. Sure, one million Canadian ex-pats live in the Los Angeles area so there is a weak connection — but the name just comes off so desperate and of the boardroom-lifestyle genre that has some poor sad sack copywriter required to come up with lines like “an enclave of West Coast cool.” Places like the Malibu give condo’s a bad name — as peddlers of fake and instant lifestyles — like the slew of condo’s around North York City Centre do. As I wrote in Eye Weekly last fall, how can somebody’s Home be taken seriously and respected when it’s in buildings with names like Cosmo, The Monet, The Majestic Phase II, Platinum Towers, Spectrum and The Ultima at Broadway or the Grande Triomphe?
With that in mind, it was refreshing to see that the old Speedy Muffler shop across from the MEC fleece palace at Peter and King is going from automotive use to residential — and better yet, the condo is named after the postal code: M5V. Though the website suffers from Flash and dull Malibu-worthy lounge music, the hyper-local reference is all about the location, and not something else. Nice. The building renderings look alright too, all glassy, colourful and light, like it could float away. Once built, with any luck, it will continuously draw our attention away from the massive white turd of a Holiday Inn on the northeast corner. That’s the kind of building that makes it a pity Toronto isn’t on an active fault line.
If you’re in the area, check out the weird sales centre (which itself appears to be LEED certified), complete with new age and huggy sculptures and bubbling fountains. The marketers must be listening to too much Sting. At least the M5V architects weren’t.
13 comments
These cheesy names can hurt the developers too. On last week’s episode on Big City Broker, the HGTV show about Brad Lamb, he pulled out of his sales contract for MODE because of poor marketing and a bad name that didn’t tell you anything about the building. He said just calling it “Adelaide Lofts” would have been better.
“the HGTV show about Brad Lamb”; you mean the the HGTV advertisement for Brad Lamb.
A show about selling condos, I cant wait for us to run out of “reality”.
These places aren’t really being sold as places to live in for any length of time; it’s not like the buildings are built either with any sense of permanence or flair.
One of the more interesting aspects of condo culture is the proliferation of radio ads. They sometimes use an popular show tune to give an air of urbane sophistication. The “Frasier Crane” myth if you will.
Has any place in Toronto ever done an exhibit that examines the artifice of condo culture? Just the idea of covering such a subject would amazing.
I think the “weak connection” for the Malibu is a lot weaker than that. Maybe the “million” wasn’t meant to be taken literally, but if it was: the 2000 US Census foreign-born population data only has 765,530 people born in Canada living in the entire United States. If they distributed themselves evenly throughout the US population (which they surely don’t), the LA area’s share would be in the 35,000 range. There are probably more people living in M5V!
I have to laugh every time I see the M5V ads they have plastered all the way up the st. patrick subway platform…
“If you don’t know…. you don’t know”
Yeah, sure guys… It’s advertised -everywhere-. that’s Toronto’s best kept secret alright.
matt> I’d heard that 1000000 cdns in LA figure tossed about a bunch of different places, but hadn’t checked if it was true. I sort of like(d?) the idea of Canada’s biggest diaspora being in Los Angeles.
That said, I was going out on a limb for the Malibu people, trying to think of ANY connection that would make that name seem reasonable.
Michael> Ya, an exploration of that lifestyle myth would be interesting. Not all condo marketing schemes do this though. I think I remember places like Radio City being interesting and, uh, reality based. Though everything about real estate is interesting — the “upper beaches” and “lower forest hill” and all that. Condo marketing culture has a certain loungy-slickness to it, while the home market is more old school fiction.
@james – I think the “If you don’t know…” campaign is for another building. I guess it only proves how ineffective some of these campaigns are.
Ultimately that all it is; marketing. Buildings have had hopelessly contrived names for ages. The city is full of “El Dorados”, or “Rodeos” or what ever movie-influenced theme happened to be popular in the ’60’s. The strange thing is that it usually has absolutely no relationship to the building itself – well designed buildings often suffer from poor marketing and vice versa.
As for the M5V building, it seems like a nice building on the wrong site. It would’ve been better off at either corner of that block (Spadina or Peter).
Last week I noticed a sign for a new development called “San Francisco by the Bay”. As you can guess by the name, the development is in Pickering.
“I have to laugh every time I see the M5V ads they have plastered all the way up the st. patrick subway platform…”
They are actually ads for the nearby 9T6 condos that are being launched this weekend, not M5V.
I agree though about M5V. At least it says something about its location. BTW, a new condo named “The Chicago” was launched in Mississauga the other day. Unfortunately, Toronto already has one…and I dare say Mississauga’s looks better!
Hi – my name is Mazyar and our firm, TAS DesignBuild is the developer behind the M5V Condominium project, we also designed the presentation center.
I recently replied to a posting in treehugger.com, recognizing the justfied cynicism that is often voiced, holding the developer community itself responsible for it. In recognizing this, we make every effort at TAS to substantiate our efforts and move away from marketing based projects who can not stand ground.
We have made a very deliberate effort to name our projects to refelct their own integrity, our first project was called ZED (this led the onslught to all the “z” names) and the second DIA. We believe in building brand as opposed to creating marketing campaigns. Our projects attempt to have a consistency at every level all of which are based on the integrity of the building, its design and character. We appreciate the fact that this has been recognized – thank you.
I do take an issue with the comment about our sales office being “weird” especially coming from Spacing. We pride ourselves as being city builders, playing an important role in impacting the way our city looks and presents itself. We have gone above and beyond in creating a presenetation center that at once anchors a prominent corner in the city and interacts on multiple levels – inside and out. The courtyard and the water feature play two roles: firstly, it is to represent the courtyards that our penthouse units have; secondly it acts as a cistern to collect grey water from the roof top of the building. It also offers itself as a piece of public art that has been especially engaging over the past couple of months.
I would invite anyone one down to visit the presentation center. It is the first sales office that will be LEED certified – we should be achieving Silver. We have also developed the center as a resource for new home buying and information on LEED and Green living. Best of all, complimentary espressos and lattes! (now that’s condo selling!)
Thanks,
Mazyar
Mazyar> I did mean weird in the best possible way — I told people to visit it if they’re nearby! Weird, compared to standard-issue sales centres, so yes, a good thing. I would say it’s a little over the top in the Zen department (eg Sting & lounge music) though, but that’s just a small detail. I think this is the first temporary building I’ve heard of that has LEED certification.
Paul> Your right about the names like El Durado’s — I’m fond of those ones though. Maybe it’s the mod architecture they’re usually associated with, or just time and age make everything seem acceptable.
“Weird” names like ZED or MOZO or even slightly pretentious names like VU (or however they spell it) I don’t mind either. It’s the ones that blatantly refer to some place else. Part of the illusion created by some condo companies, that some people like to buy into.
I can’t see anything wrong on giving buildings projects such names. I mean, what’s bad on this names. I found e.g. The Monet really good. We should be international. Just because, there is not Toronto or something typical of our town in the name, it doesn’t mean, it’s not an appropriate name for the project. I was in many cities and there are also a lot of projects, which names were a little bit exotic, but people like such names.