Conservatory

There are spectacular two-storey homes and roof-top decks in this courtyard-centred building, completed in 2000 by Pasera Corporation, which has since built several other inner-city Calgary condo projects such as Paserium, Solarium, Le Beau, and La Rive.

The building is atop an in-ground concrete parkade with 86 titled parking stalls. The five residential floors are modern frame construction with structural joists and gypcrete overlay housing 68 roomy suites. Eighteen suites each have two parking stalls. The double parking mostly goes with the fourth-floor two-level suites that also enjoy the large roof-top decks, some of which boast hot tubs. These upper homes have ceilings 18.5 feet high with a wall of living room windows, plus a metal spiral staircase to the loft den and its door to the roof-top deck. Downstairs the building's ground-floor suites enjoy ceilings 14 feet high, with second and third-floor homes all having 9-foot ceilings, so everyone here has more headroom than the usual eight feet.

The one-bedroom suites are about 624 square feet, with two-bedroom homes ranging up to 1,254 square feet. All suites ring the courtyard, allowing light in from both ends of the suites, although of course that also means that neighbours walk past the courtyard-facing windows of neighbouring suites. There's a single piston-pushed elevator in a glass-walled housing that overlooks the courtyard gardens and rockery; 'cute. Suites on the south side face onto the alley behind 17th Avenue, so glass-block walls there give ground-floor suites plenty of light but also privacy. All suites have in-floor heating, a natural gas fireplace, stainless steel appliances plus in-suite laundry and many have true hardwood floors and granite countertops. Corner suites have rounded balconies. The Conservatory has a European air about it. Dogs are allowed at the time of writing.

Exterior windows and doors at the Conservatory are common property. I have on file all original marketing materials, floor plans, and the Condo Plan.