Doncrest

The place

Doncrest sits in the southeast corner of Richmond Hill, with Highway 7 and the Markham boundary to the south, Bayview Avenue to the west, 16th Avenue to the north and the Beaver Creek business park to the east, beyond which lies Highway 404. Valleymede Drive runs through its middle from Highway 7 to 16th Avenue. The land falls away toward a tributary of German Mills Creek, part of the Don watershed, and that crest gave the neighbourhood its name.

Unlike the older parts of the city, Doncrest has no village behind it. It was farmland on the Markham Township side of Richmond Hill until town planners laid it out as a subdivision in the 1980s and gave it a name invented for the purpose. The houses followed through the 1980s and 1990s, at the same time that the Beaver Creek business park to the east was becoming the city’s commercial centre; Richmond Hill moved its City Hall there in 1994. The result is a neighbourhood that is residential at its core and surrounded on two sides by offices, retail and highways, which is both its convenience and its character.

The houses

The original houses are a recognisable type: two-storey detached homes in pinkish-red brick, with a neo-Georgian front, a prominent attached garage, an interlock driveway and a centre-hall plan with four bedrooms. They were well built for their era and most have been kept up. Semi-detached houses are few, and low- and mid-rise condominiums occupy the perimeter near Highway 7 and Bayview.

Thirty-five years on, the stock is at the age of decision. Many owners have renovated completely, opening the main floor, replacing windows, re-cladding the front in stone or stucco and finishing the lower level. A smaller but growing number have taken the house down and built new, and these rebuilds are the neighbourhood’s custom houses: brick and stone two-storeys with larger windows, deeper rear rooms and, on the creek lots, walk-out lower levels over the valley. A new build in Doncrest tends to be designed for a family that wants a modern house without giving up the location, and it is the first sign of the neighbourhood moving up a tier.

Streets and lots

Valleymede Drive is the spine and the address of the park and arena, and the crescents and courts off it are the residential core. Lisa Crescent and Doncrest Road are among the names that come up in enquiries, and the southern streets that back onto the creek valley are the most asked for. High Tech Road and York Boulevard are the commercial edges, not residential addresses.

Lots are regular and of ordinary suburban depth, with the exception of those along the creek, which are deeper, treed and in some cases ravine lots with conservation setbacks. The streets were planted when they were built and the trees have matured, so the neighbourhood is noticeably greener than its surroundings of business park and highway. The best address here is a court lot on the valley with a mature canopy behind it.

Living here

David Hamilton Park and the Ed Sackfield Arena on Valleymede Drive are the community hub, renovated and expanded with a new ice pad, fitness and aerobics rooms, a walking track, new play areas, a splash pad and multi-use courts. The Blackmore tennis club adjoins the park. The creek valley provides a walking edge along the south, and Bayview Hill’s parks and community centre are a few minutes north across 16th Avenue.

Shopping and food are a strength. High Tech Road, off Bayview, has large-format grocers and retailers, and the Highway 7 corridor east toward Leslie Street holds one of the region’s densest concentrations of Chinese and other Asian restaurants, bakeries and markets. York Cinemas on York Boulevard shows South Asian films. Transit is the best in Richmond Hill: the Richmond Hill Centre terminal at Yonge and Highway 7 is the hub for Viva and local routes, Langstaff GO station is linked to it by a pedestrian bridge, and the planned Yonge subway extension will end there. Highway 404 and Highway 407 are each a few minutes away, so downtown Toronto, Markham and Pearson are all reasonable drives.

Buying and selling in Doncrest

Houses resell steadily, and the buyer pool is broad: families moving up from condominiums and townhouses, professionals who work in Beaver Creek or Markham, and buyers who want the transit hub and the highways more than they want a large lot. Renovated houses sell quickly; original houses are bought either by families planning a renovation or, on the better lots, by builders. Rebuilt houses have begun to set new benchmarks for the neighbourhood and draw buyers who would once have looked only at Bayview Hill.

Sellers of an original house should understand that its value increasingly lies in the lot and the location, and should price with the rebuild market in mind. Sellers of a renovated or new house should present the finishes and the mechanicals carefully, because buyers are comparing against both older stock and new construction elsewhere. If you are watching this neighbourhood, join the private register and we will tell you when something is about to come up, listed or not.

Doncrest is Richmond Hill’s most connected neighbourhood, and its 1980s streets are quietly becoming something more. For a buyer who values the drive, the train and the dinner table over the size of the lot, it is the place to watch.