King West Village is attaining high-class status in leaps and bounds. New investments are pouring into this formerly strictly working class area that once housed mainly factories and warehouses.

Today’s King Street West is home to Victoria and Georgian-style townhomes, spectacular lofts and condominiums and a nice mix of bohemian and mainstream retailers.

Among the recent projects to join the village is a 150,000 square-foot office development west of Spadina Ave., which will boast up to 12 floors of offices, street-level retail and on-site parking. A luxury condo development is also going up one block south with units starting at an unprecedented $1.5 million.

The office building concept was born when Allied Properties purchased a two-storey brock-and-beam structure at 544 King St. W., which was originally constructed in 1944. When an adjacent property on Morrison St. went on the market, new possibilities opened up in constructing a more grandiose building. With a nod to preserving some of the historic sensibility of the neighbourhood, developers plan to reuse beams, connectors and some of the brick from the old buildings in the new one.

Construction is expected to cost $40 million and be completed in late 2009.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 10:59 am and is filed under Neighbourhoods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.