Shanly Street Warehouse condos create lofty spaces
by Dianne Maley
The Globe and Mail
November 5, 1983
"We're all artists at heart. In our secret selves we stand in vast skylit studios with wooden floors and soaring ceilings, painting, sculpting, staining glass.

Or perhaps it's the music in a huge room with vaulted ceilings we sit, alone, at the piano."

"From an old felt factory at 41 Shanly St. near Bloor and Dovercourt, Mr. Mitchell has created 10 truly offbeat spaces: loft condominiums. The warehouse flavor - open spaces, brick, ceiling timbers and steel - has been retained and enhanced. But each unit has a fireplace, a big fenced-in roof garden with a wall of windows, and a modern kitchen and bath.

Public response was encouraging. Within a week of placing an ad in the paper, all the units had been sold.
Buyers with vision, undeterred by the eyesore of a building before, chose their units from floor plans and a cardboard model.

The neighbors were pleased too - an essential part of the conversion process. 'Neighbors had been complaining to their alderman for years about this building,' Mr. Mitchell says."

"The building, which had been a livery stable at the turn of the century, was ripe for conversion. It is in a residential neighborhood, so its use did not conform to city bylaws.

Only a select few industrial buildings are convertible.

The city is very concerned about keeping its industrial base intact,' Mr. Mitchell says. 'We looked at some buildings downtown a couple of years 		ago, but we just couldn't persuade (the city) that converting to residential was the right thing to do. What would have been a nice project just died on the board.'"

"For those who feel constrained by conventional spaces, warehouse conversion offers an interesting alternative. Units at 41 Shanly range in size from 800 to 2,000 square feet and were priced from $59,900 to to $114,900. Other such projects are in the works.

'It's very satisfying to take something that's a piece of junk and turn it into something that to me is a piece of art', Mr. Mitchell says."

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