Two master suites are rare in an apartment but perfect for some buyers
Michael Sasges
Sun
VANCOUVER SUN – For those who prefer their master suite on the steamy side, the Ritz offers this peek-a-boo division between bedroom and bath in one of the two master suites. Grace Kwok adds that, of course, drywall and tiling is an option.
For those among us who are sharing their homes with either their parents or their adult children, an innovation in the Ritz residential tower planned for Melville and Bute makes downtown residency a possibility.
A three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in which two of the bedrooms and bathrooms are connected is the “feature” plan at the Coal Harbour project from Pinnacle International. There are 30 of the 1,345-square-foot apartments on offer, of which eight had been sold by this week.
Two master suites are not unknown in a multi-residential project.
The Heather Greene townhouses in Richmond, for example, offer a first-floor arrangement that allows owners to to create either a family or TV room with an adjoining powder room or a bedroom with either an adjoining powder room or full bathroom. Adera plans to repeat this “flex room” in its upcoming Granville Greene development.
The Heather Greene master suites are two floors apart. Their Ritz equivalents are on the same floor.
Grace Kwok, whose Anson Realty is marketing the Ritz homes, says projects with which she has been involved in the past have offered two-master-suite homes, but only as an “experiment.” In her experience, if two master suites were to be found anywhere in apartments, it was in penthouses.
“This time we wanted to offer that feature to more households. So on the northwest corner of this project all the units from the fourth floor to the top floor have two master suites,” Kwok says.
Trail-blazing marketing is a Pinnacle and Kwok characteristic.
She helped introduced “pre-sales” to the Lower Mainland new-home market more than 20 years ago. Pinnacle helped introduce residential-tower residency in Yaletown, with its signature project, the Pinnacle on Homer Street.
Together and more recently they’ve helped introduce pre-sale marketing to San Diego and reintroduce it to Toronto.
“The last year has been very busy for me,” Kwok says.
She has been a more than frequent flyer of late, to assist in the marketing of the Pinnacle Museum Tower in the California city and and the company’s Bellagio on Bloor and Pinnace Centre in the Ontario city.
Additionally she directed the marketing of a two-tower project by Pinnacle at the foot of Lonsdale in North Vancouver, the Pier, and the Melville tower, now under construction, across Bute Street from the future site of the Ritz.
The Ritz display centre on Pender Street features another marketing innovation typical of Pinnacle and Kwok, an exercise in cross-promotion. It is a Pinnace Centre showhome.
If the Ritz showhome is aimed at persuading metro Vancouver residents their next principal residence could be above Coal Harbour, the Pinnace Centre showhome is there to persuade those among us with spare cash that a Toronto apartment is a good place to park it.
On offer at the Ritz are 170 apartments and, eventually, 10 townhouses (along Melville) and at least one penthouse.
There will be a private athletic club and there will be a concierge. Construction is scheduled to begin this summer; occupancy, by the summer of 2007.
Kwok puts the asking price at $650 to $670 a square foot for a top-floor “feature” apartment, “at, if not the lower end of the Coal Harbour scale, then reasonably balanced.”
“We want people to come and take a look and then go out and compare and decide if this is what they’re actually looking for. Buying property is a very, very important decision and people should be a little bit cautious. It’s maybe not a good thing for a realtor to say, but we think that way.”
To tour both showhomes with Kwok and to ask her about her work in Toronto and San Diego is to see and hear about metro Vancouver and our residential expectations comparatively.
For example, Pinnacle Centre and the Ritz are both, more of less, waterfront developments. But Pinnacle Centre is also located near Toronto‘s financial district — a.k.a. Canada‘s financial centre — and, for those in that economic sector with the means and aspirations for rural living, at the end of a long commute.
“A lot of people who have homes in the suburbs, because the travelling times are so much longer than in Vancouver, also have small spaces, second homes, downtown . . . . It’s a lot like New York, where people live out in the country, but in a city home during the week.”
Additionally, metro Toronto has not been exposed to showhome marketing with the same intensity as we have here, Kwok says.
“It used to be that people would do vignettes, to show how the kitchen cabinets would look, how the faucets would look, what the bathroom would look like.
“For 10 years now and with the consent of the developers, we’ve always done show suites. That way the purchaser goes to the next step, gets to feel and touch the unit rather than wait for the finished thing.
“Looking at a faucet is one thing. Looking at a beautiful kitchen is another.”
San Diego has had little exposure to pre-sale showhome marketing, she says, but the success of the Pinnacle Museum Tower there signals, for Kwok, an emerging Southern California acceptance of the Vancouver new-home marketing style — and more.
“I think the whole concept of downtown Vancouver, the formation of downtown Vancouver, has been an exportable model. I feel really proud to be a part of it in a little way.”
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NEW HOMES PROJECT PROFILE
The Ritz
Showhome address: 1366 West Pender, Vancouver
Telephone: 604-683-1328
On offer: 170 apartments, of which 50 have been sold by this week
Size: One bedroom plus den, from 650 sq. ft. – three bedrooms, three bathrooms, 1,345 sq. ft.
Prices: From $319,000
Developer: Pinnacle International
Architect: Hancock Bruckner Eng & Wright
Web: www.liveattheritz.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
