Four years ago, 88 Isabella Street was going to be a 62-storey condo tower. It’s now a 50-storey rental building, and it’s started. Capital Developments, through its purpose-built rental platform Address, and partner Woodbourne held a groundbreaking in mid-October 2026 on the site just east of Church Street in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley neighbourhood.
The switch says plenty about Toronto’s housing market. The condo version, first filed in April 2022, carried 751 units. The resubmission in June 2026 cut the height and turned the whole building into rentals.
Project Scope
Diamond Schmitt Architects designed the tower, which rises 50 storeys from a six-storey podium to 166.99 metres. It holds 508 units: 426 new market-rate rentals and 82 rental replacement units for tenants of the 14-storey, 1965 apartment building that was demolished on the site in 2025. The mix is 16 studios, 322 one-bedrooms, 127 two-bedrooms and 43 three-bedrooms.
Residential gross floor area is 35,428 square metres on a 2,071-square-metre lot, a density of 17.11 times coverage. There are three levels of underground parking with 105 spaces and 509 bike spaces. Four elevators serve the building, roughly one for every 127 units, which UrbanToronto flagged as requiring high-speed machines to keep wait times reasonable.
Amenities include an outdoor terrace wrapping the base of the tower, an outdoor pool, a fitness studio and spa, a children’s room and co-working space, spread over about 1,062 square metres indoors and 824 outdoors. SKYGRiD is the builder. The Planning Partnership is landscape architect, GBCA Architects is heritage architect, and Smith + Andersen handles electrical. Completion is expected in 2030.
Why It Matters
Toronto’s downtown condo presale market has stalled, and projects that penciled as condos in 2022 don’t anymore. Converting to purpose-built rental, even at a smaller size, is how developers are getting shovels in the ground. 88 Isabella lost 241 units in the redesign but gained a start date.
It’s also the opening move on a crowded block. Capital Developments has a 69-storey tower proposed next door at 90 Isabella, and 81-83 Isabella, 48 Isabella and 55 Isabella are all proposed at 69 to 75 storeys. Whether those follow this one into rental, or wait for condo buyers to return, will decide how fast Church-Wellesley actually builds out.
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Project Team & Details
| Developer | Capital Developments (Address) |
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| Owner / Client | Capital Developments and Woodbourne Canada Management, Inc. |
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| Architect | Diamond Schmitt Architects |
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| Consultants | The Planning Partnership (Landscape Architecture)
GBCA Architects (Heritage Architecture)
Smith + Andersen (Electrical Engineering)
Goldberg Group (Planning)
LEA Consulting (Transportation)
J.D. Barnes Limited (Site Services) |
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| General Contractor | SKYGRiD |
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| Status | Under Construction |
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| Funding Source | Private |
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