Hälsa

Global leader

Hälsa will be Toronto's first One Planet Living community. It will deliver the city's first timber frame mid-rise buildings, breaking new ground for reducing embodied carbon impacts

Hälsa is a joint venture between Windmill Developments and Leader Lane Developments. It comprises three residential buildings in Etobicoke’s Mimico neighbourhood of Toronto, consisting of two six-storey and one eight-storey residential building, totalling 83 homes. The buildings are located at 230 Royal York, 430 Royal York and 722 The Queensway, all within 10 minutes’ walk of each other.

As part of the One Planet Living Real Estate Fund portfolio, Hälsa is part of a process to make aspirational One Planet Living a standard and consistent way of delivering communities.

Health and happiness
Well-structured resident surveys comparing health and wellbeing indicators with local baselines. Active travel provision is excellent. Thermal comfort, healthy materials, and exposed timber surfaces. Use of private and shared outdoor spaces.

Travel and transport
Excellent location for minimising car dependency, with convenient access to bus, train, active travel routes, and most retail and service needs. Car parking <0.5 spaces per dwelling with ample EV charging. Walkscore ratings of 66-77 and cycling scores of 68-84. There is a bike maintenance area with communal tools, a bike wash facility and electric bike charging.

Materials and products
Hälsa will pioneer the first prefabricated CLT (cross-laminated timber) mid-rise projects in Toronto, reducing upfront embodied carbon to below 250kgCO2/m2. Specifications include local sourcing, responsible extraction, and environmental product declarations. The OPL Lifestyle package will encourage low impact resident consumption habits.

Zero carbon energy
Hälsa has good building fabric specification with Thermal Energy Demand Intensity (TEDI) target <30kWh/m2. Space heating and cooling are met using ground-source heat pumps. Energy use intensity is modelled at 69kWh/m2. Windmill envisages post-occupancy energy monitoring for at least one year. Clean grid electricity results in a small residual GHG intensity of 2.5kgCO2/m2, to be offset in line with Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) standards.

One Planet Living is our vision of a world where we can live happily within the Earth’s resources, and a straightforward framework to achieve this
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