Mother Nature may not be co-operating, but Phil Calvano and his team at North Star Homes are wasting no time gearing up for the spring sales season.
It’s understandable if they’re eager to get the party started: “This is our 25th year in the business,” Calvano, the company’s sales manager, tells the Epoch Times in an interview.
Concord-based North Star recently helped mark this auspicious occasion with the launch of the model home at the presentation centre for its Chateau Collection development in Richmond Hill. The sales centre display gives high-end home-hunters a taste of the top-grade finishes and furnishing possibilities on offer at this exclusive French-inspired enclave at Bayview Avenue and Bloomington Road East.
The 23 luxury homes at The Chateau Collection boast high-pitched rooflines, turret rooms, and sweeping staircases. The residences are located on a cul-de-sac and back onto a protected nature preserve. Sizes range from 3,800 square feet to 4,800 square feet, with prices starting at $1.3 million and topping out at $1.7 million.
The project is 50 percent sold, according to Calvano, who notes that the luxe residences feature granite countertops, hardwood flooring, triple-glazed windows, 10-foot ceilings, and finished basements.
“It’s a gorgeous collection in a small enclave,” he says. “These homes are quite spectacular.” Perhaps all the more so because they’re wired to accommodate electric car charging stations, a green amenity that puts North Star in the vanguard of sustainable residential developers.
This weekend (April 11) will see the launch of the company’s Bayview Gardens, 70 contemporary-style townhomes at Bayview and Elgin Mills Road in Richmond Hill. The homes range from 2,381 square feet to 3,533 square feet, with prices from $709,990 to $849,990. Calvano underscores the project’s central Richmond Hill location. “It’s close to everything.”
So is Connexion, a new townhouse community in old Islington Village in Etobicoke that North Star will be launching later this spring. The project is steps from Bloor Street and the Islington TTC subway station; it’s also well-positioned for Mississauga Transit and GO Transit service. The townhomes range from 594 square feet to 956 square feet; they’re priced from the mid-$200.000s.
And last but not least, this summer North Star will start on the second phase of Millfair Village, a subdivision of detached homes in Cookstown, just off Highway 27 between Bradford and Barrie.
The first phase—bungalows and two-storey homes—is nearly sold out; the second phase will bring 60 additional detached homes. Prices range from $529,990 to $649,990. “Nothing has really been built in Cookstown in terms of a subdivision in many years,” Calvano points out. “We were one of the first to go in there and build a subdivision of this size.”
North Star has come a long way from when it began operations a quarter-century ago. A lot has changed in the market since then, too, Calvano notes, particularly vast improvements in the quality of home construction.
“Years ago homes were built pretty basically,” he says. “Today, while people might be paying more for houses, with all the energy efficiencies, state of the art technologies, and the quality of new-home finishes, they’re really getting so much more for their money now.”
He’s confident the projects North Star is unrolling this spring will tick all the right boxes for the buying public, giving the company one more reason to pop a cork or two in its 25th year.
“This is the product the market is looking for,” Calvano says. “So I see us doing extremely well throughout 2015, 2016, and beyond.”
Ryan Starr is a freelance journalist based in Toronto.
