EDMONTON — It is still more than two years from welcoming residents, but the Symphony Tower is striking the right chord with home buyers in Edmonton.

Nearly half of the 138 units in the luxurious, 27-storey downtown condominium are already spoken for, including three suites that sold for more than $2 million each and a half-dozen that sold for $1 million or more.

“The location is the highlight,” Allen Wasnea, the project’s developer, said Saturday after a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the site where the highrise will be constructed at the edge of the North Saskatchewan River.

Suites on the upper stories will have floor-to-ceiling windows with sweeping views of the legislature, the High Level Bridge and the University of Alberta.

“We are facing what I consider to be the finest landscape in the province,” Wasnea said. “A lot of people are able and happy to pay for the view. God is not making river valley lots anymore.”

The Symphony, whose suites are all named after composers, already boasts being home to the most expensive condominium in Edmonton history — a 3,125-square-foot, three-bedroom residence on the 26th floor that sold for $2.6 million.

The 4,000-square-foot penthouse one floor above it cost $3 million, but doesn’t count as a record because it was snatched up by the developer and his wife.

“I just did what I was told,” said Wasnea, whose firm also owns 15 apartment buildings within two blocks of the Symphony.

Wasnea said construction is expected to begin within a few weeks, with the tower opened to residents in 2017. The skyscraper will be built at the corner of 97th Avenue and 106th Street, with 70 per cent of its suites priced above $500,000.

The price of remaining units is likely to rise as soon as construction starts.

“Selling them will be easy,” Wasnea said.

Guests streamed into the Symphony’s sales office all day Saturday, examining a scale model of the building amid the fragrance of potpourri and the quiet strains of concertos. Later, they joined Wasnea and his staff as they toasted the project with champagne.

The condo is not the most expensive in Western Canada — a 6,400-square-foot penthouse at Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific sold for $25 million in 2013 — but it’s pretty elegant for Edmonton. (A luxury condo in Calgary sold for just shy of $9 million in 2012.)

Units in the Symphony come with parking stalls — two for suites that cost more than $800,000 — with additional parking spaces available for $45,000. The building’s parkade will be equipped with spaces lifts so residents can safely park their luxury vehicles above the one they use for city driving.

One-bedroom, 611-square-foot Beethoven suites — the Symphony’s cheapest — sell for $266,000. All buyers are requested to put a minimum of 10 per cent down.

The tower will have a pedway that links directly to the legislature grounds.

“We have some impressive buyers, including some former government members,” Wasnea said. “They will be able to keep a good eye on the legislature.”

mklinkenberg@edmontonjournal.com



By the numbers:



$2.65 million: Price paid for a 26th-floor-unit, a record for an MLS condo listing in Edmonton