Category: General
CentreCourt and Parallax Developments kicked off sales for their new 199 Church Condos development with what was hailed as the first in-person condo launch in Toronto since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The invite-only event distanced guests in a creative way, hosting a drive-in launch at the City View Drive-In on Polson Street in the Port Lands area.
Toronto area realtors gathered in 200 vehicles on the evening of Wednesday, July 15th for a premiere screening of the development’s marketing program. While the drive-in’s 200-car capacity put a hard cap on how many attendees could participate, over 2,500 expressed interest in attending. To meet the demand, the presentation was live-streamed to registrants who couldn’t participate in person.
“While we are always excited to launch a new condominium development, tonight’s event is just a bit more special,” read a statement issued on Wednesday by CentreCourt president, Shamez Virani. “Premiering 199 Church at a drive-in gives us the ability to bring the real estate community together in person for the first time in months, while doing so safely.”
Those in attendance and those tuned in via the live stream got a taste of the 37-storey IBI Group-designed tower’s exterior through a virtual presentation, along with a look at the building’s 484 condominium units, planned in a mix of studio, one, two, and three-bedroom suites, which are priced from the low $500,000s. More than half of all suites are priced below $649,990. Also shown were the building’s IBI Group-appointed interior spaces, including a grand lobby which will feature furnishings by Fendi, and 20,000 ft² of indoor and outdoor amenity spaces, such as a shared co-working space and lounge, 24-hour fitness facility, games areas, a dining room, and an entertainment lounge.
“The location, suite mix, and affordable pricing structure convinced us that, upon its release, there would be tremendous excitement for the project—just on its merits,” stated Virani. “Add to that the ability to bring the city’s most successful condo agents out of isolation and together at the same time, to premiere the project in a highly produced, captivating, and dynamic theatrical presentation, to do it in such a unique environment…and the level of anticipation for the launch has reached unprecedented levels.”
A recording of the live stream is included below.
Additional information and images can be found in our Database file for the project, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum thread, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
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Alisha Mughal
Shamez Virani loves Toronto.
With an MBA from Columbia University and experience as an analyst in investment banking for Goldman
Sachs, you wouldn’t think Virani could wax romantic about the city. But really, the President of Toronto-based construction firm CentreCourt, Virani just might be the most hopeful Torontonian among us. And it is this passion, which he’s infused into CentreCourt, its offices and its ethos, that makes the company one of the most actively growing and modern in the city.
CentreCourt is the Silicon Valley tech startup equivalent of a construction company in Toronto. “We’re sort of a high rise condo developer who does everything from the beginning to the end of the whole development process,” Virani says. And this process includes everything from land acquisition — attaining land suitable for high-rise residential sites — to re-zoning, taking the land to sales and marketing, and ultimately going to construction. Virani’s business partner Andrew Hoffman founded the company, and when Virani came to it, he infused it with 21st century philosophies surrounding ethics and work. This has resulted in exponential growth at CentreCourt over the past 10 years.
Currently, CentreCourt has 18 high-rise residential condominium projects at varying stages of development; and 12 projects in varying phases of construction and pre-development comprising of approximately 6000 units and $3.2 billion in development value . Cumulatively, CentreCourt’s developments are comprised of approximately 9,000 units, 6.6 million square feet of gross floor area, and $4.5 billion in development value.
Many of the projects, developed and developing, are located in downtown Toronto, with a few scattered
throughout the greater Toronto area. CentreCourt, ultimately, is responsible for helping grow Toronto, and witnessing this growth first hand is something that, for Virani, is endlessly fulfilling.
“I started my career in investment banking and one of the things that I felt that wasn’t fulfilling about that life was you worked on spreadsheets and documents, and [with] a lot of hypotheticals,” he says. Much of the work was done on paper. “Whereas with condo development or real estate development, generally, I think what drew me to it from the earliest years […] was the fact that I was always captivated by the skyline transforming and seeing new things being built.”
The projects CentreCourt works on can take up to five years to reach completion, ending when people have moved into a high rise. “But at the end of it,” Virani says, “what I love is that I can look in the skyline and — and I do this all the time where I point out to my family or my friends, our developments from various vantage points. And you feel a sense of accomplishment when you see a project that you were involved in from the formation stage just through to completion.”
Virani and all at CentreCourt are responsible for creating the Toronto that many of us live and work in. But within the offices of CentreCourt, you’ll be able to find, in addition to the implementation of modern tech, the multifaceted and diverse representation that Toronto itself is home to, reflected in microcosmic form. This is something Virani is responsible for.
Historically and traditionally, real estate companies are hierarchical, with movement within and upwards being possible through the fulfillment of certain roles for a certain period of time. CentreCourt, however, is different. “We’re extremely flat,” Virani says. “We thought, in the way that we want to build an industry-leading company that has the best outcomes, the best track record within our industry, is we have to have everybody act and feel like an owner and feel really responsible for their outcome.” In this sense, CentreCourt is like a tech startup.
