Building a house or an apartment building has always been expensive. Prices for materials rise and with the ongoing trade war and erratic behaviour with our southern neighbours we have no idea how high these cost will go up. Large condos can take up to a decade to build and simply buying millions of kilos in materials in bulk isn’t feasible. Where are we storing a condo’s worth of materials. I believe the solution is multiple smaller apartments made with Canadian materials.
One way would be ‘Mass Timber’ apartment buildings. These are 5 to 10 story buildings that are prefabricated and shipped to the construction site, cutting the construction time dramatically, and being made with primarily Canadian lumber we don’t have to worry about seemingly random tariffs from our southern neighbour.
A great example of this is 230 Royal York in Etobicoke. This 9 floor, 60 unit, passive, apartment building started construction in January 2025 and is on track to be finished by the end of this year. It made by a Canadian company, with Canadian materials and Canadian workers
For another example look no further than the University of Torontos very own Academic Wood Tower, a 14 story, 77 metre high, timber and steel hybrid. It’s firmly planted on the existing foundation of the previous building, cutting costs, and at just under 3 years of construction it is nearly complete. It may sound experimental to some but mass timber is not new and has been used all over the world.
