This is a timely follow-up to Friday’s discussion of paying more at Festival Tower just to live in the “Redford” unit instead of the “Model Z.”

But what about living in the prestigious “Penthouse” of a building?  Does that carry some weight?

I think it does, and if the photo below is any indication, I think developers are catching on…

I can count!

Can you?

My niece is now ten months old, and when Uncle Pipes and Charly Bear have their hangout time, I can’t help but try to teach her something educational.   Perhaps a few letters of the alphabet, or maybe counting from one-to-ten?  She’s all but rebuffed my attempts to teach her the 27 Major League Baseball players to record 3,000 career base-hits, and she can’t pronounce “Roberto Clemente”……yet…

I mention this because I think even my ten-month-old niece, with a little coaching, could count the number of penthouse levels in the photo above.

Oh sure, all rational logic and common sense might dictate that there should only be ONE penthouse floor in a building, but the above photo tells another story…

Ask the average Joe what a “penthouse” refers to and he might say “it’s the top floor of a building.”

I might agree with that.

www.dictionary.com defines a penthouse as “an apartment or dwelling on the roof of a building, usually set back from the outer walls.”

Any way you slice it, you’d expect that a penthouse is the top floor of a building, and thus it’s special.

You can’t get any higher!  You’re already at the top!

This has led to the definition of “sub-penthouse,” which speaks for itself – it’s the level below the penthouse.

That’s all well and good, but I can’t help but wonder when, or who developed the idea of the “sub-sub-penthouse.”

Maybe it was the same guy who figured he could steal all the business from “Eight Minute Abs” by developing “SEVEN Minute Abs!”

As cynical as I am, I ignored this topic for a while.

I was in Liberty Village a few weeks ago at 50 Lynn Williams Street and I couldn’t help but notice that they had floors labelled PH3, PH2, and PH1.

Really?

PH3?

I understand the penthouse, and I suppose the sub-penthouse, but I laughed when I saw “PH3” because somewhere out there is an owner who orders a pizza and instead of saying “Unit 2307,” says “The twenty-third suite on the third penthouse level.”

It’s like the DiCaprio, Hepburn, and Keaton units all over again!

So imagine in pre-construction for 50 Lynn Williams when salespeople were offering “Penthouse” units that were on the 23rd storey of a 25-storey building.  I find the whole idea to be comical, at best.  Did anybody bite on this?  Did people actually purchase because they were being offered a “Penthouse,” or was it just a nice, ridiculous surprise when they took possession?

If you stole the hood ornament on a Mercedes, and duct-taped it to the front of your Honda, could you drive around and tell people that you’re in a Mercedes?

“That’s funny…..I didn’t know that Mercedes made a Civic…”

Today I was in Lumiere at 770 Bay Street, and I noticed the following:

Wow.

SIX penthouse units!

That’s like taking eight-minute-abs, re-branding it as seven-minute-abs, and then doing it in SIX MINUTES!

Because why would the developer only create six penthouse units?

Would seven have been ridiculous?

Does six-versus-seven represent that line that you just do not cross?

Is it like the fine line between the first row of golds at the A.C.C. and the last row of platinum?

How do you think the owner on the 27th floor feels?

He got shafted!

He could have been Penthouse Seven, but instead, he’s just on the 27th floor.

Boooooooo-ring!

Call me crazy, but I’ve always thought that the “Penthouse” should be something special!  If you’re on the top floor of an 80-storey-building, then that’s certainly a penthouse!

But there’s nothing special about living on the 28th floor of a 33-storey building, even if you label it with a “P” and an “H.”

And for those who want to put a number to this, consider that 19% of these floors are “Penthouse Levels.”

Nineteen percent!  Is that a little ridiculous?

I might be able to understand SIX penthouse levels if this building were 80-storeys, but it’s only 33-storeys, and there is no 13th floor.  And are there any units on the ground floor?  How many residential units are on the third level where the amenities are?

So let’s round up and say that one-quarter of all the actual units in the building are considered “Penthouse Units.”

One quarter?  That’s ridiculous.  They’re not fooling anybody.

I’ll go as far as to say that personally, I would prefer not to live on “PH6.”

I can’t just imagine the scorn and ridicule I would have to endure from my friends.

PH6?  Really?  There’s no way that would get past my group of friends without a comment, or twenty.

It just sounds so phony.

I’d much rather live on “Floor 27” than “PH6,” and I’m not just saying this to add more credibility to my post.

Just imagine how crazy it would be for my 2nd floor condo to fall into this trap; I’d be living on PH15!

If you’ve ever seen a building with PH1, PH2, PH3, PH4, PH5, PH6, and beyond, please let me know!  Or better yet – take a photo!

Just like the guy that turned eight-minute-abs into seven-minute-abs, I’m sure there is a developer somewhere that is looking at the six levels of Penthouses at Lumiere and thinking, “I can do one better”…