Brewery Lofts

History of Brewery Lofts

The name comes from the land, not the building. The Dominion Brewery was built at Queen and Sumach in 1878, with the Dominion Hotel, now the Dominion pub, following in 1889. The brewery closed in 1936, and its old buildings along Queen were restored as shops and offices in the late 1980s, partly by the Sorbara Group.

The building at 90 Sumach was put up in 1956 as a warehouse behind the old brewery and became a workhouse for CBC Television in its first decades: design centre, prop warehouse, archives, rehearsal space and workshops. It had only tiny windows then. Sorbara bought it as an investment, expecting the CBC to stay for good on its modest rent, but the CBC moved out and the building sat empty from 1993 to 1996.

With the City relaxing zoning to let old factories and warehouses be turned into homes, Sorbara converted it in 1998 into about 100 lofts, its first residential project. Bricks were knocked out to put in 14-foot-high sheets of glass, while the thick concrete floors and massive pillars were left raw. Lofts run from about 750 to over 3,000 square feet, most of them 1,100 to 1,600, the halls and doors are enormous, and the penthouses have spiral stairs up to private roof terraces. Parking fills the first two floors. In 2013 the owners renamed it the Lofts at 90 Sumach to end the confusion about the brewery.

Stories you'll hear

“It was a brewery.” It never was; it was built in 1956 on land that had belonged to the Dominion Brewery.

The building's own story says Glenn Gould, Jim Henson and Lorne Michaels all worked here in the CBC years. It's often repeated, but we haven't found a record of who worked here.