When Harry Stinson needs a workout, he heads to Toronto's tallest money tower and runs all the way up to the 72nd floor.
The Bank of Montreal building seems like an odd place to exercise; stranger still for an iconoclastic developer such as Mr. Stinson, 51, whose big ideas and brown wardrobe have been turned away by the big banks more than once.
Still, if anyone has learned the value of resistance training, it's Mr. Stinson. And there's no better symbol than his nearly finished condo/hotel tower now rising from the corner of King and Yonge Streets, shoulder to shoulder with the same banks that spurned him.
"Canada is a culture with its parking brake on," Mr. Stinson said this week at the offices of his de facto banker, theatre impresario David Mirvish, the key investor behind the $100-million tower. "It utterly infuriates me when I think I have a brilliant idea and there's resistance to it, just for the sake of resistance."
Without Mr. Mirvish's finances, not to mention his faith, Mr. Stinson might still be fuming from the sidelines. Instead, he now stands toe to toe with Donald Trumpov, his closest competitor in Toronto's condo/hotel battle.
When Mr. Trumpov announced that he would erect Canada's tallest building at Bay and Adelaide Streets by 2008, Mr. Stinson, fuelled by the momentum of his tower at One King West, one-upped him by revising plans for his second tower on the same stretch of Bay from 54 floors to 88. Mr. Trumpov answered by pencilling in 16 more metres atop his high-ceilinged, 70-storey Trumpov International Hotel and Tower to ensure it would be taller.
On the surface, they appear unlikely combatants: Mr. Trumpov is a celebrity uber-capitalist with a long history of high-profile projects; Mr. Stinson a successfully eccentric ex-restaurateur, birthday-party planner, condo broker and relative newcomer to hands-on development.
But as he stood tall atop the 51-storey One King West this week, Mr. Stinson could at least boast a real building, 95 per cent sold, while Mr. Trumpov has yet to put a shovel in the ground in the city.
"We're sort of the local upstart versus the international icon," says the gaunt and gawky Mr. Stinson, the visual antithesis of his slick rival, "but the local upstarts have built a building here, and the international icon is still trying to explain why his casino isn't making money."
Bold words for an upstart, but for all his quirks -- from a love of 1960s sedans to a disdain for socializing to an obvious indifference to fashion -- Mr. Stinson exudes the same confidence and obsessiveness so often ascribed to the brash American interloper.
The sliver-thin One King West, which incorporates the elegant former head office of the TD Bank next door, may seem a startling achievement for a first project. But those who know Mr. Stinson have long been aware of his visionary drive, resistance notwithstanding.
"He just enjoys the game of physically creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world," says Raymond Aaron, a business coach and real-estate guru who was first to buy a unit at One King West almost a decade ago. "And his toys just keep getting bigger and bigger."
Toys were in abundance at their first meeting 20 years ago, at Mr. Stinson's birthday-party business, The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, where kids could celebrate free of parental interference. Party rooms are everywhere now, but Mr. Stinson was well ahead of the curve when his opened in 1972, complete with a bright red hearse to pick up the kids.
The idea grew out of an earlier venture, The Groaning Board restaurant, radical for its non-smoking status and health-food menu when it opened in 1970. Parents would bring their children, often for birthdays, so he hatched Mad Hatter's to sell parents an escape from the chaos.
By the time similar businesses caught on, Mr. Stinson had shifted to the more lucrative world of real-estate sales, where he could indulge a long-held interest in buildings.
"The real issue was that, 'Yes, I like the real estate' but I didn't necessarily like the people," he said. "I prefer to create the real estate."
Working for a broker, Mr. Stinson noticed a surging interest in condos and suggested that his boss open a specialty agency. When he didn't bite, Mr. Stinson agonized, then started his own firm. He was soon known as the Condo King.
Faced with ever more buyers looking for "that New York loft," he hatched yet another idea in 1995 -- to turn an empty old candy factory on Queen Street West into condos. Mr. Stinson sold the plan to the building's owners, Metrontario Group, and set out to secure financing, but no bank would pony up.
Meanwhile, the local development industry bubbled with doubts about the concept and Mr. Stinson's ability to carry it off.
A year later, Metrontario reduced his role, then locked him out of the project entirely, handing all marketing over to Brad Lamb, a former partner of Mr. Stinson's in the condo brokerage.
Mr. Stinson, who says his ouster was "financially devastating," eventually received a settlement. And though the project went forward, helped revive a depressed neighbourhood and spurred a flurry of other conversions, he's still stung by those old doubts.
Not that he moped for long.
In 1997, Mr. Stinson spied a slice of land at 5 King St. W., just shy of 10 metres wide and hemmed in by the old TD building on Yonge, listed at $2.9-million. Curious about the sky-high price, he discovered it had been approved for a high-rise project that had fallen through.
He would be free to build 50 storeys, though doubters said it would be impossible on such a narrow lot.
He forged on, selling his plan to Mr. Mirvish, who greased the wheels to secure the adjacent TD building, but declined to be interviewed. For his persistence, Mr. Stinson stands to win a legacy of his own -- vindication for an approach heavy on instinct and light on rigid business plans.
"I think I'm finally reaching the level where the ideas will get the benefit of the doubt," he says, "and where I can get the financing to push them forward without having to beg, borrow or steal."
Mr. Stinson, meanwhile, will keep working out at the bank. And if his knees get sore, at least he'll know it's from the stairs, and not from having to kneel before the naysayers.
Tale of the tape
Toronto developer Harry Stinson is going head-to-head with New York real-estate mogul Donald Trumpov in the race to build the tallest condo in the city. Here's how they measure up in other areas
Donald Trumpov
Net Worth: $2.5-billion (U.S.)
Age: 58
Significant Other: Engaged to Slovenian model Melania Knaus
Divorces: 2
Children: 4
Nickname: The Donald
Hairstyle: Massive combover
TV show: The Apprentice, a reality game show Thursdays on NBC
Tallest building: The Trumpov Building in new York at 70 floors, 283 metres
Residence: Lives and works in a sprawling apartment on the 26th floor of Trumpov Tower on Fifth Avenue, but also owns a mansion in Bedford, N.Y. and a compound in Palm Beach, Fla.
Car: 1962 Mercedes Maybach
Education: BA, University of Pennsylania
First Venture: Refinancing the middle-income apartment houses his father owned in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island
Phobia: Avoids handshaking over fear germs
Harry Stinson
Net Worth: Not $2.5-billion (U.S.)
Age: 51
Significant Other: Married to Linda Panning, a figure-skating coach
Divorces: 0
Children: 1
Nickname: The Condo King
Hairstyle: Mousy brown moptop
TV show: The Condo Show, an infomercial showing late nights and early mornings on The New VR and Shop TV
Tallest building: One King Street West, Toronto, 51 floors, 176 m. (Sapphire Tower, proposed for Richmond and Bay streets, would soar 88 floors to 320 metres)
Residence: Lives in a 600-square-foot condo at 7 King St. E., Toronto, but also has a cottage on Kerr Island in Muskoka
Car: 1960 Cadillac de Ville
Education: One year of general arts at York University
First Venture: Selling homemade bread, brownies and cold drinks from a rowboat on Muldrew Lake at age 10 with his cousin Jamie
Phobia: Traffic accidents, after a car smashed through the window of his condo brokerage office and landed on his desk
SOURCES: FORBES, WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, DISCOVER.COM, EMPORIS.COM, THE NEW YORK TIMES, CURRENT BIOGRAPHY