Toronto condo at centre of party and bottle tossing investigation not short-term rental: property manager

TORONTO — The property manager of a downtown Toronto condo where bottles were thrown from a unit 35 floors up to the streets below is denying claims by Toronto police that the suite was a short-term rental unit.

Faisal Fiaz told CTV News Toronto that the unit at York Street and Lakeshore Boulevard was rented as a one-year lease to a tenant who was at a party in the unit— and the landlord is taking steps to make sure nothing like that happens again.

“She’s a long-term tenant, and we will be going to the landlord-tenant board to have her evicted because of her actions, so we can revoke her lease,” Fiaz said in an interview.

On Sunday, police shut down the street next to the building and found themselves pelted with bottles from the party. Seven people were charged with violating COVID-19 rules and four people were charged criminally.

Police said Sunday that the unit was a short-term rental unit — one of several in the building that had attracted their attention over the past years, with incidents including a bullet through a resident’s wall last fall, and a man shot on the 16th floor back in 2018.

City inspectors started an investigation into whether anyone had broken the city’s new short-term rental rules. Records show the unit is owned by a Windsor doctor and his wife.

But condo management also seemed to say there was no short-term rental there.

“There had already been several noise complaints before the incident occurred,” said Fisnick Basha, the Senior Condominium Manager at ICE Condominiums.

“Kindly note, based on our records, the said unit is not a short-term rental,” Basha added.

City councillor Paula Fletcher said that the bottles being thrown is “scandalous.”

“It’s egregious behaviour, throwing bottles off the balcony. No one can believe this is happening,” she said. “It’s going to take a couple of detectives to figure out what’s going on. We’ll get to it.”

Toronto’s mayor compared what happened to the notorious incident involving Marcella Zoia, who was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $2,000 fine for throwing a chair off her balcony.

“The behaviour itself, throwing the bottles off the condo building, ranks up there with ‘Chair-girl’ as among the most grossly irresponsible events we’ve seen in the course of the pandemic,” John Tory said.