Re: Residences of Maple Leaf Square - Update/Retail
National Post
Link to article
Touch of chic around rink
Letter from south of front
Peter Kuitenbrouwer
National Post
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Back when the Leafs played at Maple Leaf Gardens, hockey fans from out of town could bunk at the Days Inn, next door on Carlton Street.
Yesterday, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd. announced a deal to bring a Hotel Le Germain into its Maple Leaf Square condo project beside the Air Canada Centre, a sign of how the average hockey fan has changed: rooms at Le Germain go for $275-$315 a night.
That said, the Le Germain may be the best thing to arrive south of Front Street in awhile, and you have only to meet Christiane Germain to understand why.
Yesterday Ms. Germain, who owns the chain with her brother, Jean-Yves Germain, touched down at her Hotel Le Germain on Mercer Street, which the family built in 2003. She held court in the two-storey 'apartment' ($750 a night) on the top of the eight-storey hotel, to talk about her new Toronto venture.
Ms. Germain wore black knee high riding boots and, over a white blouse with ruffled cuffs worthy of Marie Antoinette, a crinkled black kimono by Marie St-Pierre, a designer in Montreal.
With generic condo towers rising cheek by jowl all over the south edge of Toronto, the area will certainly benefit from the kind of chic touch for which the Quebecois chain is known. Most hotels have 2.5-metre ceilings; Le Germain builds them over three metres, and in the hallway of the Mercer Street hotel is a wood narrow wood shelf with three small indentations, in each of which rests a Granny Smith apple.
"The district is evolving a lot," Ms. Germain notes, speaking of the area around the ACC. "It's not just because there's hockey. It has everything to become an incredible neighbourhood. Let's not forget that you're two blocks from the lake and two blocks from the business core. It's an area full of promise.
"At some point," she continues, "the City of Toronto will get to its waterfront. This is going to be an extremely busy area. There is enormous potential."
The Hotel Le Germain, born in Quebec City in 1988, now counts two hotels in that town, plus one each in Montreal and Toronto. Yesterday after I said goodbye, Ms. Germain caught a flight to Calgary, where she is set to announce another hotel project today.
I ambled down to the CN Tower and east toward the ACC, to examine more closely this area in which Ms. Germain sees so much promise. Give the town planners some credit: they built a beautiful park just east of the Rogers Centre, to frame Steam whistle Brewing in the old Round House. The park offers a grand vista of the Toronto skyline to its north, and of the GO trains rumbling into Union Station.
This park, which rests atop the vast subterranean meeting rooms of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, will become busier as people occupy the condos.
East of the park, workers installed windows on phase two of the Infinity condos; I walked along Bremner Boulevard to York Street, where surveyors worked at the site of Maple Leaf Square; on the north side of Bremner, other workers were starting construction of the office tower for Telus, the phone company.
"By the time we open in less than three years this will be a great neighbourhood," says Richard Peddie, the chief executive of Maple Leaf Sports.
As for Le Germain, "We liked their reputation for quality and service. We like the personal touch. Her [Ms. Germain] and her brother are the owners, just like we're dealing with Tony Longo on the grocery side. We liked that about them." (Longos plans a supermarket for Maple Leaf Square).
Yes, Ms. Germain, from the site of your future hotel, the lake is indeed two blocks away. However, when I tried to get there I braved two traffic islands under the Gardiner Expressway and ended up in a little round park surrounded by a rusting off-ramp. I still couldn't see the lake, and there was no path to get there.
The built form around here, giant condo towers, militates toward sanitized corporate tenants, such as the Quiznos on Queen's Quay where I ate a six inch cheese sub for $4.23, listening to Peter Frampton sing "Show Me the Way."
That's why Le Germain is a welcome addition. I hope, too, that some buildings rent space to little independent sandwich shops, diners and watering holes; it is such diversity and character that truly make a neighbourhood.