Black car service in Yorkville

Yorkville from the driver's seat

Yorkville is where our premium sedans spend their evenings. It is the neighbourhood visiting executives and celebrities stay in, the one Torontonians book a car to for an anniversary dinner, the shopping district where the bags are worth a chauffeur, and — because of TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival's hotels and the Bloor Street galas — the district with the most discreet arrivals in the city. It is also small, tight and one-way, and a car that arrives at the wrong door on Cumberland Street on a Saturday night loops the block for ten minutes. This page is the working knowledge: the streets, the hotels door by door, the restaurants and how dinner pickups are timed, the shopping day, the routes to the airports and the season that changes everything in September.

The streets: how Yorkville is laid out

Bloor Street is the spine — four lanes, two-way, with the boutiques on both sides between Avenue Road and Yonge, and no stopping in the curb lanes at the peaks. North of Bloor, the village is a grid of short streets: Cumberland Street (one-way westbound between Bay and Avenue Road, with the restaurants and the Cumberland Terrace), Yorkville Avenue (one-way eastbound, the boutiques and the Four Seasons' Yorkville entrance), Scollard Street (one-way westbound, the quieter restaurants), Hazelton Avenue (two-way, the Hazelton Hotel and the galleries), Bellair Street and Old York Lane (pedestrian). Bay Street runs north-south through it with the Bay subway station and the Manulife Centre; Avenue Road forms the western edge with the Park Hyatt and the Royal Ontario Museum across the road; Davenport Road bounds it to the north. A chauffeur who works Yorkville knows that a Cumberland Street restaurant is approached from Bay and exited onto Avenue Road, that Yorkville Avenue is entered from Avenue Road and exited at Bay, and that the fastest way to turn around is Davenport.

The hotels, door by door

• Four Seasons Toronto (60 Yorkville Avenue): the main porte-cochère is on Yorkville Avenue, eastbound one-way, entered from Avenue Road or Bay via Cumberland. The Bay Street side has a secondary entrance for the residences and the bar. Valet handles the lane; our chauffeurs pull into the porte-cochère and the doorman knows the plate. See the Four Seasons guide.
• The Hazelton Hotel (118 Yorkville Avenue at Hazelton): the discreet one. The entrance is on Yorkville Avenue with a short lay-by; the Hazelton Avenue side is quieter for arrivals that should not be seen. See the Hazelton and Park Hyatt guide.
• Park Hyatt Toronto (4 Avenue Road at Bloor): the entrance is on Avenue Road with a porte-cochère; the corner with Bloor is a busy intersection and the chauffeur enters northbound from Bloor.
• Windsor Arms (18 St. Thomas Street): a small street south of Bloor, easy lay-by, the quietest hotel pickup in the district.
• The Yorkville Royal Sonesta (formerly the InterContinental, 220 Bloor West): Bloor Street porte-cochère, west of Avenue Road.
• Kimpton Saint George (280 Bloor West): Bloor Street door, the same rule.
• The Anndore House and the Bloor-Yonge hotels: Charles Street and the side streets.

Restaurants and the dinner pickup

Yorkville's restaurants — the rooms on Cumberland and Yorkville Avenue, the steakhouses on Bloor, the hotel dining rooms, the patios on Scollard — turn over between 6 and 10 p.m. with a rush at 7:30 that fills every lay-by in the village. The dinner car pattern that works: drop at the restaurant's door at the reservation time (the chauffeur knows which one-way street it is on), the chauffeur circulates or parks in the Cumberland or Bloor-Yorkville garages, and a text at dessert brings the car back to the door in four minutes. Hourly bookings handle this best because the end of dinner is never certain; the hourly chauffeur page and the fine dining evening article explain the timing. For the restaurants on Cumberland the pickup is often better arranged on Bellair or at the Cumberland Terrace lay-by than at the door, because Cumberland stops moving at 8 p.m. on a Saturday.

The shopping day

Bloor Street between Avenue Road and Yonge — the Mink Mile — carries the flagship boutiques, the Holt Renfrew store at Bloor and Bay, the Manulife Centre and, across Avenue Road, the Colonnade; Yorkville Avenue and Hazelton carry the galleries and the designer stores. A shopping day by chauffeur is an hourly booking: the car takes the bags between stops (a shopper carrying nothing is a shopper who buys more, which the boutiques know), waits in the garages, and extends the day to Yorkdale up the Allen Road or the Eaton Centre down Yonge without a second thought. The shopping guide works a full day; visitors from abroad book it with a premium sedan, and the boutiques will call us for a client.

To the airports

Pearson from Yorkville has two routes and the chauffeur chooses by the hour: north on Avenue Road to the 401 west (best off-peak and whenever the Gardiner is closed; 30 to 40 minutes), or south to the Gardiner and the 427 (sometimes faster in the evening; 35 to 45). Peak times run 50 to 75 minutes either way. The Allen Road to the 401 from the Bloor-Bathurst side is a third option for the western end of the district. Billy Bishop is south down Bay or University to the waterfront, 15 to 25 minutes. The Pearson page has the timing tables; the notes field of the booking is where you tell us the hotel door.

Yorkville in September: TIFF and the gala season

For ten days in September Yorkville is the festival's hotel district: the Four Seasons, Hazelton and Park Hyatt fill with talent and studio delegations, Yorkville Avenue is lined with photographers, and the streets around the hotels are managed by security and the City. Pickups become a matter of the hotel's back entrance, a chauffeur who has been briefed on the delegation's movements, and patience at the Bloor and Avenue Road corner. TIFF bookings are made weeks ahead by studios, publicists and the festival's own transport partners, and the district's ordinary dinner and shopping traffic is best planned around the screening schedule. The TIFF guide covers the closures on King Street where the cinemas are and the Yorkville end where the hotels are. The gala season that follows — the ROM's galas across Avenue Road, the Royal Conservatory's events on Bloor — brings the same pattern in evening dress.

Who books in Yorkville

Visiting executives and their assistants (the district's hotels are where boards and roadshows stay; corporate accounts handle the airport and the hourly days); couples for dinners, anniversaries and proposals (the proposal planning article is Yorkville-heavy for a reason); residents of the Yorkville and Bloor Street condominiums, who book the same Pearson and Billy Bishop runs as anyone downtown; shoppers and visitors on hourly days; and the entertainment and media industry in September. Discretion is the district's currency and the privacy standard is the one Yorkville bookings are held to.

The ROM, the Conservatory and the museum block

Across Avenue Road from the Park Hyatt is the Royal Ontario Museum, with the Gardiner Museum opposite and the Royal Conservatory's Koerner Hall a block west on Bloor; the Bata Shoe Museum is at Bloor and St. George. A cultural day begins at the ROM's Bloor Street entrance (the Queen's Park side is the members' door) and the car waits on Queen's Park Crescent; Koerner Hall concerts let out onto Bloor at 10 p.m. with a lay-by on Philosopher's Walk. The cultural day article strings the museums together with the AGO and Casa Loma.

Booking a car in Yorkville

The engine prices any Yorkville address; the notes field takes the hotel and the door. For dinners and shopping, choose "hourly"; for the airport, the flight number. Hotel concierges know us and will book on a guest's behalf.

Residents of Yorkville and the Annex

Yorkville is a residential neighbourhood as much as a hotel district — the condominium towers on Bay, Cumberland, Yorkville Avenue and Bloor, the residences above the Four Seasons and the Hazelton, and the houses of the Annex and Rosedale to the west and north. Residents book the Pearson run at every hour, Billy Bishop for the Ottawa flight, the school run to the private schools on Avenue Road and in Forest Hill, and the weekly errands that a standing order covers. Pickups at the towers use their lay-bys and concierges; at the houses on the Annex's tree-lined streets the car is at the curb with a text. The seniors' guide describes the standing arrangements that many Rosedale and Annex families set up for parents.

Yorkville's calendar

Beyond September's TIFF, the district has a rhythm. The Yorkville Exotic Car Show closes Bloor Street for a Sunday in June; the ROM's and the Conservatory's gala nights fill Avenue Road and Bloor with black cars in the autumn; the Bloor-Yorkville Icefest brings crowds to the village in February; the holiday season lights the boutiques from mid-November and fills the restaurants until January. Each changes the pickups a little — an event day closes a street, a gala night fills a porte-cochère — and dispatch reads the BIA's calendar and the City's closure notices so the chauffeur knows before you do. The events calendar has the year.

Parking in Yorkville, and why the chauffeur does not

The village's garages — under the Cumberland Terrace, the Bloor-Yorkville lot on Cumberland, the Manulife Centre, the hotels' own — are the reason an hourly car can wait through a two-hour dinner without idling on Cumberland Street: the chauffeur parks, the parking passes through at cost on the receipt, and the car returns to the door on a text. On-street stopping in the village is enforced by parking officers who know every chauffeur in the city by sight; a professional does not test them. Toronto's idling bylaw limits stationary idling to a minute in most conditions, which is a second reason the car is in a garage rather than at the curb with the engine running.

Yorkville to everywhere: a table

Proposals, anniversaries and the small occasions

Yorkville is where Toronto proposes — the terrace at a Bloor Street hotel, a corner table on Cumberland, a walk through the village lit for the holidays — and the car is part of the staging: a premium sedan at the door, a chauffeur who has been told the plan and keeps it, champagne on ice for the drive home. Anniversaries and birthdays follow the same script with less secrecy. The proposal planning and anniversary and date night articles cover how the evening is booked and timed; the hourly structure is the right one, because nobody knows how long a proposal takes.

Medical and university traffic through Yorkville

Avenue Road and University Avenue run south from the district to the hospital row — Mount Sinai, Toronto General, Princess Margaret, Sick Kids — and Queen's Park and the University of Toronto's St. George campus sit at its southern edge. Yorkville's hotels host visiting surgeons, families of patients and academic visitors, and a short hourly booking that takes a family from a Bloor Street hotel to an 8 a.m. appointment on University Avenue and waits is one of the district's most common weekday trips. The hospital row guide and the U of T guide cover the buildings and the doors.

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