Month: May 2022

• The pre-meeting is often better than most panel discussions

  

  When you’re preparing for a panel discussion, one of the things you usually do is have a pre-meeting with all of the participants. The purpose of this meeting is, of course, to get to know everyone and decide on what you’re going to talk about. Everything then gets buttoned up and you have the actual panel.

  But one of the things I’ve been feeling lately is that oftentimes the pre-meeting is more interesting than the actual panel. And that’s because everyone is more relaxed and everyone is engaged in a genuine discussion that hasn’t been pre-meditated. Nobody wants to hear boring and overly-scripted answers. Natural and free-flowing discussions are so much more engaging.

  So I’m going to try and keep this in mind and not put on a sucky panel next week at the land & development conference (which, by the way, will be in person). I’m moderating a panel on innovations in project design, delivery, and building operations. If you’d like to join, you can register over here.

  2022.05.31

• Developer advertising turned cultural monument

  

  I don’t really have an opinion on the debate surrounding public access to Los Angeles’ famed Hollywood sign. I just don’t know enough and I’ve never visited it myself.

  On the one hand, if you live in Hollywoodland, I can see how having 10 million or so people traipse through your neighborhood each year to take photos of the sign might be a little annoying.

  On the other hand, living in a big city like Los Angeles means dealing with certain annoyances. And doesn’t everyone deserve a selfie with the sign? It also doesn’t seem to be impacting values (see above).

  What is more interesting to me is that all of this is a reminder that many/most of the neighborhoods and communities that people love today were, at one point, built be developers.

  The Hollywood sign was first erected in 1923, and originally read Hollywoodland. It was developer advertising at its finest and intended to sell new homes. The sign cost $21,000 at the time.

  Today the sign is a LA Historic-Cultural Monument and one of the city’s most recognizable icons. Isn’t it funny how this stuff works?

  Chart via the WSJ

  2022.05.30

• Water supply and air conditioning

  This past weekend I was reminded that Phoenix is largely what it is today — the 5th biggest city in the US — because of two very important things.

  Firstly, the city had to figure out water supply.

  About 50% of the city’s water supply comes from surface and groundwater, specifically the Verde River and the Salt River watersheds that are to the north and east of the city. And about 40% comes from the Central Arizona Project, which is a 541 km diversion canal that pulls water from the Colorado River and brings it through the state (terminating in Tucson). From what I have read, the CAP canal serves about 80% of the state’s population.

  Secondly, Phoenix needed A/C.

  Air conditioning was first invented at the beginning of the 1900s, but it really didn’t become ubiquitous until the second half of the century. And not surprisingly, it made the southwest of the US far more appealing. In 1950, Phoenix had just over 100,000 people. By 1960, the city had grown by about 311% to reach nearly 440,000 people. Apparently there was more construction in 1959 alone than from 1914 to 1945 combined. Air conditioning made Phoenix’s summers bearable.

  Air conditioning is such an interesting topic because it’s one of those things that many of us take for granted. When you walk into a store or an office building in the summer, you expect it to be cool. But it hasn’t really been around all that long and its invention has, in many ways, been instrumental in defining the modern city. Even something as common and banal as a glass office tower with large floor plates would not be possible/practical without air conditioning.

  We can certainly debate how sustainable it is to urbanize and air condition desert climates like Phoenix, but there’s no denying that air conditioning has had a profound impact on our urban landscapes. Diversion canals are pretty important too.

  2022.05.29

• Frank Lloyd Wright hated tall people

  I have been in a few of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses and in every case it turned out like this:

  

  

  The Prairie School (of architecture), for which Wright was a pioneer, was all about horizontality. That typically meant flat roofs, deep overhangs and, in the case of Wright’s work, exceptionally low ceiling heights.

  I’m about 6’3”. Many of his clear heights were less than 7’ and I believe his doorways were often 6’2”. This clearly doesn’t work for me, but it mattered for what Wright was trying to do. And I don’t think he was the type to worry about small matters like the comfort of tall people.

  The above photos were taken at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright bought the land (495 acres) in 1937, and turned it into both his winter home and a teaching studio.

  Apparently Wright paid $3.50 per acre at the time, which feels like a pretty good deal to me. It shows you the power of just buying and holding things over long periods of time.

  Today, Taliesin West is the home base of Wright’s foundation and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I’m glad I was able to finally visit it after reading about it for so many years in architecture school.

  2022.05.28

• Rotterdam Rooftop Walk

  A new brightly-colored rooftop installation opened up this week in Rotterdam. It includes a 30-meter-high aerial bridge that connects a few of the city’s rooftops. Designed by Rotterdam Rooftop Days and MVRDV, the “Rotterdam Rooftop Walk” is designed to bring awareness to the city’s rooftops and demonstrate how they might be used as an added layer of public infrastructure within the city. The installation will run from May 26 to June 24.

  This is a neat idea and not just because I like bright orange things. Rooftops are, by and large, underutilized assets within our cities. It behooves us to do more (I just wanted to say behooves). But I think it’s important to keep in mind that aerial bridges and rooftop spaces can come in many different forms. I think you could argue that there are aerial bridges designed to enliven forgotten spaces (like this example here) and there are aerial bridges designed as a solution to appalling and inhospitable ground planes.

  Sometimes these inhospitable spaces are because of extreme climates and sometimes it is because we forgot how to design spaces that are actually enjoyable for pedestrians. The former of these two scenarios is, I guess, more excusable. But I do think that many cities lack the kind of densities needed to animate multiple layers of public spaces. Often you need to pick where you want to focus people’s attention.

  Still, bright orange walkways. Neat.

  2022.05.27

• Virtual sneakers to cutting-edge kicks

  Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum has an exhibition on right now that is all about sneakers. It’s called Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks. I haven’t been to it yet, but it’s on the list. Because this is interesting to me for a few reasons.

  One, shoes are important and, as a general rule, I always wear them when I leave the house. Though there may have been some exceptions to this general rule.

  Two, sneakers are high fashion. Just look at everyone walking around Paris.

  And three, sneakers are such a great example of a clothing device that went from utility (we need to protect our feet) to fashion (we all have a desire to express our unique identities) to art collectible (yes, lots of people buy shoes that they never actually wear).

  So if you’re looking at stuff like NFTs and digital fashion and scratching your head as to why they have any value, sneakers are probably a good place to look to help you understand why many of us seem to have a need to collect things that help us define our sense of self.

  This is, of course, one of the reasons why Nike bought a digital shoe company.

  I suspect that the exhibition will be at least partially about this and at least partially about really cool 3D-printed shoes.

  2022.05.26

• Design-forward vacation rentals

  There is a massive void in the southern Ontario hospitality space when it comes to design-focused vacation rentals and boutique hotels.

  — Brandon Donnelly (@donnelly_b) May 23, 2022

  What I was getting at with the above tweet is that I think there’s way more demand, for places like this and this, than there is supply. Click on the first link and you’ll see that it’s booked up all summer long. And as for the second link, I just booked one of their rentals for this summer, but I have been trying — for years — to book it in the winter.

  I think the unmet use case is as simple as this: I live in a big city, and I want to get out of the city and go somewhere cool and design-forward. There are, of course, some options. But there’s a need for a lot more. Generally speaking, it feels to me like the majority of the supply is either (1) an expensive/large cottage or (2) an old “classic luxury” kind of hotel.

  I’m specifically referring to Toronto and southern Ontario with these options, but judging by some of the responses I got to my tweet, this appears to be an opportunity in many other markets as well. But I would be curious to hear from all you in comments or on Twitter. What “local” hospitality offerings are missing in your market? Where would you like to travel to and stay, but can’t?

  2022.05.25

• Our cities are full

  One of the most common objections to new housing is that the place is already too crowded and potentially even full. But Jerusalem Demsas’ recently article in The Atlantic about how much people seem to hate other people is a good reminder that the topic of overpopulation can be a complicated one.

  Because what are we really saying when we say a place is too crowded or full? Is it just that this particular neighborhood is full, or are we talking about entire cities being full?

  Moreover, who determines when a place is full? Berkeley, California is, for example, a hell of a lot less dense than a city like Paris. So if a place like Berkeley can be considered full by some people, what does that mean for Paris? Presumably it’s entirely unliveable.

  Or could it be that the entire world is simply full and we should be looking at more drastic measures to curb population growth (in the places that are actually reaching replacement-level fertility rates)?

  It’s all very complicated. Thankfully Demsas offers up some possible solutions in her article:

  We have, of course, discovered an elusive technology to allow more people to live on less land: It’s called an apartment building. And if people would like fewer neighbors competing for parking spaces, then they should rest assured that buses, trains, protected bike lanes, and maintained sidewalks are effective, cutting-edge inventions available to all.

  The rest of the article is just as good.

  2022.05.24

• Harvard announces new Master in Real Estate degree

  The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) just announced a new 12-month degree called the Master in Real Estate (MRE). Here’s a short excerpt about the program:

  The MRE program is designed to train future practitioners to address new and urgent realities facing the built environment and cities today. Whether undertaken by for-profit businesses, not-for-profit organizations, or public entities, real estate occupies a pivotal role in determining how the places where we live, work, and play are equitable, environmentally sustainable, and appealing, in addition to being productive for the economy.

  The key takeaways are that this is a graduate program being designed for aspiring real estate entrepreneurs and that it will live within Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. So there is an implicit recognition that the world of real estate doesn’t need to run counter to the pedagogical goals of a design school.

  Anyone who went to architecture school will tell you that real estate is often viewed as the “dark side.” Either you commit yourself to the pure world of architecture and design, or you sell out and seek profits in the world of real estate. But I have always considered this to be a false dichotomy.

  Real estate is a fundamental component of how we shape our built environment. And so if one’s ambitions are to improve the built environment — which is something that architecture schools do teach you — why should the delivery vehicle matter? Shouldn’t we be encouraging people to optimize for maximum benefit?

  I completed my undergraduate degree in architecture. But very early on I had the feeling that I was only getting one piece of a larger picture. And so I went to the University of Pennsylvania for graduate school and completed a degree that combined both architecture and real estate. My goal was to figure out a way to combine both passions. Maybe I’d become the next Jonathan Segal.

  Penn was very open to cross-disciplinary studies at the time (this was the mid-2000s), but there was still a gaping divide between the school of design and the business school. Walking across campus meant taking off one hat and putting on another. There wasn’t a lot of overlap.

  After school, I returned to Toronto and started working in development. I then decided to pursue my MBA part-time, which really wasn’t necessary for my career, but was probably driven by some sort of insecurity I felt at Penn. I was the outsider design student (with funny glasses I might add) trying to keep up with Wharton MBAs.

  I went back to the University of Toronto for my MBA and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I still couldn’t understand why there was such little overlap between the design school and the business school when it came to matters of the built environment. The real estate courses at Rotman were also extremely limited at the time.

  So I started talking to faculty members: What would it took to create a joint real estate program that lived somewhere between the design school and the business school? I offered to help and I tried to press upon everyone that this was a gaping void and a huge opportunity. Canada was falling behind in terms of real estate education. It was time to step up.

  The answer I got was generally always twofold: (1) Rotman’s real estate courses were already good enough and (2) it’s pretty hard to start a new program at the University. You have to do a bunch of things, one of which includes finding money. So, sorry.

  Harvard’s new Master in Real Estate degree is the kind of program I had in mind. So I’m happy to see others taking action. And I ultimately think it will be a good thing for our cities.

  If you’d like to apply, you can do that starting this fall.

  2022.05.23

• Time to market and managing costs

  

  If you’re building a purpose-built rental building, you spend nearly all of your money up front and then you start earning revenue (i.e. collecting rent). On the other hand, if you’re building a condominium building in a market that generally relies on pre-sales for construction financing, which is the case here in Toronto, you spend a bit of your money up front, lock in (but not collect) most, if not all, of your project revenue, and then you spend the majority of your money.

  (This is obviously a simplification and when I say “spend all of your money” I’m speaking on an unlevered gross basis and not based on equity in. But this nuance doesn’t change the point of this post.)

  I have written about the above difference before on the blog, but I think it’s particularly relevant in today’s cost environment. Looking at the construction cost chart that I posted a few days ago, it is clear that a lot of us, myself included, have never had to work and build in an environment like this.

  In the past 30 some years, we have never had to deal with construction costs rising as quickly as they are right now. Though I recognize that things did also suck in the early 80s when we had high inflation and double-digit interest rates, and in the early 90s when the real estate sector was particularly hard hit.

  In any event, what does this current environment mean for development projects? Well for one, and this is a big one, it means that spending a bit of your money up front and then locking in most of your revenue (i.e. pre-selling condominiums), can present a lot of risks if you don’t have a good handle on how much it’s going to cost you to finish the project. And the reality is that nobody has a crystal ball, especially in this kind of environment.

  So in my humble opinion, I think you need to spend a bit more of your money up front. I think it makes sense to spend the time and money on solid working drawings and on running a tight construction procurement process — all before you begin selling.

  It used to be the case that many developers would start selling before they even had their zoning in place. That is far less common today (from what I can tell) for reasons like what I’m describing here. Of course, this means it’s going to take you longer to get to market. And time equals more money. But it feels like a necessary move in this environment.

  Photo by Matías Santana on Unsplash

  2022.05.22