Toronto’s Bloor-Yorkville retail corridor is the most expensive in Canada and the fifth priciest in North America according to JLL’s City Retail 2018 report. Vancouver’s Robson street is the country’s second most expensive corridor and comes in at number 9 on the continent.
Five hundred retailers have established stores along the corridor, many of them flagship locations. Recent move-ins include Dior and Aritzia.
Who is driving the growth?
According to the report, household incomes are 171.0 per cent higher within Bloor-Yorkville than in the Toronto metro making the area a prime location for luxury, high-end retailers and restaurants.
In addition celebrities, wealthy tourists and fashionistas drive more traffic to the area in search of the true luxury shopping experience found on Upper Fifth Avenue in New York, Beverly Hills Triangle in Los Angeles, Union Square in San Francisco or Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
What is driving the growth?
The competition for land by high-rise developers has driven property prices up in the region increasing valuations and consequently property taxes.
The average selling price of a new three-bedroom condo in the area hovers around C$6.5 million, or $2,200 per square foot. As of June 2019, 91 per cent of the units under construction have been presold. With a projected growth rate of 42 percent over the next four years.
Construction and re-development
There are currently 12 large-scale construction projects underway within the corridor –including the first Andaz hotel in Toronto located at One Bloor Street West – and 11 proposed projects in the pipeline waiting for city approval.
There will be approximately 270,000 square feet of new retail space added to the existing 2.2 million square feet along the corridor including 33,000 square feet that Oxford Properties is redeveloping at the Park Hyatt hotel.
Another tenant set to drive more traffic is the Italian marketplace Eataly, expected to open its first Canadian location by late 2019 at the Manulife Centre (55 Bloor Street West), occupying 50,000 square feet across three storeys.
For the full report, visit https://www.jll.ca/content/dam/jll-com/documents/pdf/research/jll-can-Toronto-Bloor-yorkville-corridor-report.pdf.
