99 Lake Promenade, Toronto
Asking price: $8,299,000
Lot size: 56 by 209 feet, with 54 feet of waterfront
Taxes: $13,882.74 (2025)
Agents: Valerie H. Logaridis and Laura Logaridis, Johnston & Daniel, a division of Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd.
The backstory
The deck was refinished and an in-ground pool was added.Alexander Rothe
In Toronto’s west end, a waterfront house has been completely rebuilt with energy-efficient net-zero construction techniques, but is for sale in its incomplete state. Owner Kathryn Kotris is of the optimistic, glass half-full persuasion, and says the house is ready for a buyer to put their own stamp on the interior to customize a unique location to their tastes.
A more pessimistic person might look at the half-empty house with its lack of finished flooring, as well lack of a kitchen and bathrooms, and calculate that the potential cost to finish the home may not be worth the effort, despite the excellent lake access.
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For Ms. Kotris though, this rebuilding project was a necessity, something she felt she had to do after several recent infill renovations – tearing down an older home for a modern build – on the street resulted in homes she felt were unsuitable to the neighbourhood.
“I felt a personal obligation to pass on this unique lot in the most respectful way,” she said. “My intention was always to sell, and I wanted to ensure that an appropriate family home was built in keeping with the neighbourhood character.”
Ms. Kotris is a woman who likes to get involved: She’s been in the mortgage industry since the 1980s and joins study groups and industry associations. She attends lectures and conferences; she hosts fundraisers and organizing groups and has campaigned for politicians. It was while canvassing for former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in 2008 that she found herself knocking on doors in Lake Promenade and loving the neighbourhood.
In 2009, she found that one of those homes was for sale just as she was planning her own next move. “It was the prettiest little white-brick, Cape Cod home; one of the original cottages in Long Branch,” she said.
The house as it is
The home at 99 Lake Promenade in Toronto has access to Lake Ontario.Alexander Rothe
The new home is much larger than the old cottage, with close to 6,700 square feet of living space. Despite that, Ms. Kotris said it was designed to fit within the guidelines of the existing setbacks and height restrictions set out by local zoning. The only exception that required a zoning variance was an increase in the total allowable square footage, which was calculated differently because a chunk of the land is protected by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
When Ms. Kotris first bought the house, she didn’t know that she had her own stony beach. There was so much deadfall from willow trees at the edge of the property that part of it was inaccessible. Once she began to clear some of it away, she found a lakeside deck was in place at the bottom of a gentle slope; a rarity considering the TRCA doesn’t allow new ones to be built this close to Lake Ontario. The grounds have been updated to include an in-ground pool, a new retaining wall and a renewed deck.
“The deck is grandfathered in, but the TRCA said it could not be one inch larger than the previous deck,” she said.
The location is unique, and to suit it, Ms. Kotris tried to echo her previous home, which had a single steeply pitched gable. On the new, larger structure, there are two gables at the front of the house, one above the two-car garage, and the other above the covered porch.
Despite these gables, the middle portion of the roof is flat, designed to accommodate solar panels.
The front of the home.Alexander Rothe
Inside the front door is a double-height foyer and a space that could be a sitting room. “Could” is the operative word, for all the spaces in this house have only plywood subfloors, except the white-oak stairs that climb up to the second level.
The great room – the living room, kitchen and dining area – is defined by the views of the lake through the three oversized glass sliding doors, which open onto a partly covered deck that spans most of the back of the house. The rest of the room is a blank slate with only plumbing rough-ins for the kitchen.
The walls and the ceilings are drywalled and painted, but the triple-paned windows and doors are not trimmed with casings yet.
Upstairs, there are plans for four bedrooms, with rough-ins for two bathrooms and a second-floor laundry, but not much else. The basement is unfinished but has very large spaces – one room almost 20 by 40 feet – for recreation rooms, home gyms, man caves or whatever lakeside dwellers are putting in their basements these days.
Half full?
Much of the interior of the house remains unfinished; there is no flooring, nor is there a kitchen or bathrooms.Alexander Rothe
Ms. Kotris can see the finished project in her mind’s eye, even if she’s not going to be able to fill in the remaining blanks. The primary ensuite, for instance, faces the lake and the plumbing rough-ins position a tub under the windows so a person could sit and soak and watch the water.
“The windows open up at the bottom so you can hear the waves lap up. It’s a different sound when water runs over stones rather than hits a seawall,” she said.
The house has undergone extensive weatherproofing to give its insulation a highly efficient seal that helps reduce energy consumption. Even though Ms. Kotris always intended to sell the finished product, she wanted to build something to last, and to show what she thinks of the monster homes on the street.
“I couldn’t let this property be exploited. I thought I would really resent it if some developer comes in and builds an inappropriate house and makes off with a million bucks,” she said. “It does give me a great deal of pleasure, though it’s been painful and wildly expensive. I was fortunate enough to have this home,” she said. “It was 100 years old, and now I’ve built something for the next 100 years.”
This article has been updated to name Laura Logaridis as co-listing agent.
