The "Upper West Side" Condos of Canada

Posted on Thu, 05-29-2014

How much would you say a three-bedroom, Upper West Side condo with underground parking goes for? Millions? While the median price for a condo in Manhattan’s Upper West Side today stands at $3.575 million, this one is different and only a fraction of the price, at $289,000. No, that isn’t missing a zero. You can own an Upper West Side condo for less than $300,000, but there’s a catch—it’s in Canada.

Manhattan Upper West Side is a new real-estate development in Barrie, Ontario developed by Pratt Homes. The bedroom community for Toronto is composed of three, four-story buildings that aim to capture “the glitz of the Upper West Side,” according to creator Karen Hansen in a . The three buildings are aptly named the Empire, The Bloomingdale, and the Rockefeller.

Upper West Side also features a community picnic area, incorporating design elements of Tavern on the Green. The brochure for Upper West Sideboasts of being able to sit outside and play a game of checkers or chess, “just like in Central Park.”

Pratt’s first foray into a New York City-themed project began a few years ago with “Manhattan.” The urban planner for the then unnamed project just so happened to design the development around a central green space. Loving New York, Hansen and her husband, Heljar, knew what to call the community.

They named the green space Central Park. They reimagined the famous Central Park carrousel as a gazebo. They built a 12-foot-tall replica of Cleopatra’s Needle, the ancient Egyptian obelisk brought to Manhattan in 1881. The black balconies of the surrounding buildings aim to depict Manhattan fire escapes. The Hansens studied photos from their trips to Manhattan for inspiration for the community’s garbage cans, street lights, and plantings.

This summer, the Hansens will visit the actual Upper West Side for architectural inspiration, as the final details still need to be worked out. Whether or not they’ll be able to create like the Dakota, , or the San Remo, who knows, but we can’t blame them for trying.

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