Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Author: Brandon Donnelly

  • Parasitic architecture

    Parasitic architecture sounds like a bad thing because of the connotations, but you could make an argument that it is, in fact, the exact opposite. It is a way to better leverage existing structures and reclaim under-utilized urban spaces. Perhaps additive architecture would be a more appropriate name.

    Here’s one example. WARchitect recently completed this “skyscape apartment” on top of an existing 5 storey apartment building in Bangkok. It’s about 1,600 square feet. And the entire space is organized according to the structural grid of the apartment building below.

    Many/most structural systems have excess capacity because of a built in factor of safety. So for a small addition like this, I’m guessing that they probably just loaded up the existing column grid. It also looks like there were already stairs leading up to the roof of the building.

    Years ago I looked at doing an addition on top of an existing apartment building here in Toronto and it ended up being a lot more complex than I may be making it out to be in this post. Mind you, we were looking at adding on a few floors, which triggered all sorts of issues.

    But now that Toronto is allowing accessory dwelling units along its laneways, is it time that we also look at the rooftops of our existing buildings?

    Photo: Rungkit Charoenwat

  • Der Wickelfisch

    A colleague in the office recently introduced me to a Swiss invention called the Wickelfisch (or baby fish). Below is a video showing you how they work. They’re so neat. So Swiss. And I obviously just ordered one. They’re available via this US company for $12-20, depending on the size.

    The video is of people swimming in the Rhein. Because swimming downstream in rivers — and ending up in a different location — is so popular in Switzerland, the Whickelfisch was invented as a way to keep your clothes and belongings dry. It also acts as a flotation device.

    I’m not planning on floating down the Don River anytime soon, but a Wickelfisch looks like the perfect bag to bring to the beach. Especially if you don’t want to leave your stuff unattended to while you go for a swim.

    Of course, the other neat thing about this video is that it shows you how awesome it is to have clean and swimmable water running through the middle of a city. Most people I know are afraid to swim in Lake Ontario out of fear they might grow a 6th toe.

    That’s too bad.

  • Two minutes to the subway

    I was in a meeting the other day and we started talking about a wayfinding sign that indicated it was a 10 minute walk to the nearest subway station. We wondered who had made this sign and ultimately decided that the number should be 10. Either they had no idea where the subway was or they were being ultra conservative in their estimate. The subway was — at most — 5 minutes away.

    We then joked that if a developer had made the sign it would say 2 minutes, which I thought was telling. Some people like to describe real estate development as an exercise in risk mitigation. And that is certainly something that needs to be managed. But it’s also an exercise in resiliency, as you get every possible obstacle thrown in front of you. It’s as if the goal is not to build anything.

    So while it’s important to manage the possible risks, I believe you have to be a bit of a glass-half-full kind of person in order to continue the march forward. Otherwise you’d probably give up. My first boss out of grad school used to describe it as reaching into the mouth of a tiger when everyone else figured it was over. I saw her do that time and time again and it made her great at what she did.

  • Slate announces minority investment from Goldman Sachs

    On Monday, Slate Asset Management announced a minority investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Petershill Program. This is great news, so here’s a copy of the full press release that went out.

    Toronto, August 19, 2019 – Slate Asset Management L.P. (Slate), a leading alternative asset management platform with a focus on real estate and real assets, today announced a passive, non-voting minority equity investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Petershill program, creating a strategic relationship with one of the world’s leading investment managers and positioning Slate for future success. The transaction will have no impact on the control or decision making of Slate. The day-to-day operations and management of Slate will remain unchanged.

    The investment provides capital that Slate will use to enhance its platform and increase its GP investments in current and future businesses and investment vehicles, further strengthening the firm’s alignment with its clients and investing partners.

    The investment accelerates Slate’s goal to build the leading independent alternative investment platform in real estate and real assets. As part of the transaction, Slate Founders Blair and Brady Welch have made a long-term commitment to the business.

    To date Slate has completed over $11 billion of transactions across Canada, the U.S. and Europe, through multiple vehicles spanning co-investments with global institutional partners, private equity funds and publicly-traded Real Estate Investment Trusts.

    “This investment in our platform is an endorsement of our people, our strategy and our future,” said Brady Welch, co-founder of Slate. “For our investors and our team, this is excellent news; our strategy and model remain the same, and we can now benefit from our new relationship with Goldman.”

    Blair Welch, co-founder of Slate, added that: “Since we started Slate nearly 15 years ago, we have showed that we can build tremendous value by providing our investors with a unique perspective, focusing on the fundamentals of the assets we acquire and delivering hands-on management that is innovative and creative. With our new relationship with Goldman Sachs, Brady and I are enthusiastic about what all of us at Slate can accomplish together over the next decade and beyond.”

    “Slate Asset Management is an incredibly innovative, dynamic real-estate focused alternative asset management platform,” said Robert Hamilton Kelly, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Petershill program. “We are big believers in the strategy, the team and the model. We are excited to partner with Slate as they work to capture the opportunities before them.”

    About Slate Asset Management

    Slate Asset Management L.P. is a leading real-estate focused alternative investment platform with over $6 billion in assets under management. Slate is a value-oriented manager and a significant sponsor of all of its private and publicly-traded investment vehicles, which are tailored to the unique goals and objectives of its investors. The firm’s careful and selective investment approach creates long-term value with an emphasis on capital preservation and outsized returns. Slate is supported by exceptional people, flexible capital and a demonstrated ability to originate and execute on a wide range of compelling investment opportunities. Visit slateam.com to learn more.

    About Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s (GSAM) Petershill Program

    The Petershill program is managed by GSAM’s Alternative Investments & Manager Selection (AIMS) Group, which provides investors with investment and advisory solutions across leading private equity funds, hedge fund managers, real estate managers, public equity strategies and fixed income strategies. With investments in over 20 asset management firms, the Petershill program provides strategic capital to mid-sized asset management firms and has raised over $5 billion of commitments since inception. GSAM is one of the world’s leading investment managers with more than $1 trillion in assets under supervision globally as of June 30, 2019.

    For more information:

    Slate Asset Management
    Katie Fasken
    416-583-1785

    Goldman Sachs
    Patrick Scanlan
    212-902-5400

  • Is Toronto’s tech ecosystem too US-centric?

    The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece about “Silicon Valley invading Toronto” is, in my view, describing a generally positive outcome.

    We are one of the largest cities in North America (the exact ranking depends on where you draw the urban boundaries).

    We have more enlightened views around foreign and high-skilled workers (I was given a short window in which to leave the US after I finished my first graduate degree there).

    And we have a large and highly educated pool of tech talent (the salary differential discussed in the article looks to be, at least partially, a result of the weaker Canadian dollar).

    US companies are gobbling up office space in Toronto. And presumably, this is one of the reasons why 139 new flights were added between Toronto and Francisco over the last two years. (Source: WSJ)

    However, I do agree with the remarks from people like Jim Balsillie (Blackberry) and Harley Finkelstein (Shopify) that a better outcome would be the creation of more massively successful Canadian tech companies.

    As Finkelstein points out, there’s a big difference between 100,000 square feet of space for the HQ of a new and growing Canadian tech company and 100,000 square feet for a new branch or satellite office.

    The stats we read in the papers about the number of tech jobs being created in Toronto generally don’t speak to composition. Where in the value chain do these people sit? Where is the value accruing?

    The intellectual capital is here. And we should be doing everything we can to foster and finance new homegrown ideas and businesses.

    Image: WSJ

  • WordPress buys Tumblr for (only) $3 million

    Last week it was announced that brandondonnelly.com/ (which is what I use for this blog) had purchased Tumblr for around $3 million. This is, of course, after Yahoo had purchased it for $1.1 billion in 2013 and later wrote it down, having never figured out how to monetize it. Yahoo lost its shirt on the investment. I am sure you’ve probably seen some of the headlines and searing commentary online:

    I used Tumblr every day for more than 5 years. I started this daily blog on it because I had already been using it to share and collect photos. At one point Tumblr had more active users than Instagram and Pinterest combined. But eventually it lost its way. Yahoo (and later Verizon by way of its acquisition of Yahoo in 2017) didn’t know what to do with it.

    And so at the beginning of this year I said goodbye to Tumblr and switched this daily blog over to WordPress. A big part of that decision had to do with the fact that Tumblr was never really designed for long-form blogs like this one and its mobile support was even more appalling for this use case. It was impossible to write on an iPad. Switching was the right decision. I should have done it sooner.

    But now Tumblr is owned by brandondonnelly.com/. At $3 million, it feels like they're almost starting again from scratch. Maybe they'll figure Tumblr out. Or maybe they won't.

  • The Knight Frank Global Affordability Monitor 2019

    Here’s a chart from Knight Frank’s 2019 Global Affordability Monitor that I think you’ll find interesting:

    It compares real home price growth and real household income growth (after tax) over the last 5 years for 32 world cities. The bolded percentages represent the former and the non-bolded percentages represent the latter.

    Consider the variations here.

    Amsterdam saw a real home price change of 63.6%, but a household income change of only 4.4% (although the circle looks to be in the wrong spot if this number is correct).

    Moscow, on the other hand, saw flat home prices (0.1%) and a 22.7% increase in household income.

    Though San Francisco is the star in terms of income growth.

    Sao Paulo, unfortunately, saw a dramatic decline in both home prices and incomes. It’s in the bottom left corner.

    When I look at this chart, I don’t see a strong correlation between household incomes and home prices. And the proportions of the chart tell you that the y-axis is moving more than the x-axis.

    But if the top number exceeds the bottom number, then you could come to the conclusion that housing affordability has gotten worse over the last 5 years.

  • Equatorial Brutalism

    Generally speaking, architects are the only people I know who like Brutalist architecture. In fact, architect, professor and author Witold Rybczynski once proposed the following litmus test to determine whether a building is indeed an example of Brutalism: “If people don’t hate it, it can’t be Brutalist.”

    But as I have argued before, sometimes architectural styles take a bit of time to settle in and become fully appreciated. Consider how improbable it would seem to demolish a beautiful old Victorian home today. And yet Toronto, and countless other cities, did this on many occasions. Regent Park, Toronto was once Cabbagetown South.

    Brutalism also took on different sensibilities around the world.

    I love this recent piece in T (NY Times Style Magazine) by Michael Snyder called, “The Unexpectedly Tropical History of Brutalism.” In it he uses the term “Equatorial Brutalism” (a new one for me) and discusses the “surprising apotheosis” of Brutalism in equatorial countries (and in particular Brazil). It is a good follow-up to my recent post on Oscar Niemeyer’s work.

    So here’s an excerpt from Michael’s article. If you don’t already like Brutalism, maybe it’ll get you a little bit closer.

    What these buildings shared, beyond an aesthetic — though they shared that, too, with their radical porousness, their blunt geometric forms and their extensive use of raw concrete — was a commitment to architecture as an instigator of progress. But in the tropics, Brutalism reached an unexpected apotheosis: Infiltrated by lush plants and softened by humidity, buildings that looked cold and imposing against London’s constant drizzle or Boston’s icy slush were transformed into fecund, vital spaces. Concrete surfaces bloomed green with moss. The panels of glass necessary for sealing rooms against the northern chill either disappeared or receded from view, encouraging cross-ventilation while also protecting interior spaces from direct sun. The openness and transparency that the Smithsons had pronounced became a practical reality in these humid environments, both theoretically and literally: Built from inexpensive, readily available materials, equatorial Brutalism was as accessible and functional as it was symbolically potent, resulting in buildings that would define new societies growing around them like vines. Here, Brutalism wasn’t only an architecture that shaped the future or confronted the past — it was an architecture of freedom.

    Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

  • The reversion of European cities

    This recent Economist article makes the argument that, despite the recent (and sometimes annoying) proliferation of electric scooters across Europe, we probably shouldn’t be that grouchy about them. And that’s, “because the rise of the electric scooter is part of a broader and welcome phenomenon: the gradual retreat of the car from the European city.” By way of one example, by next year, Paris will have grown its bike lane network by 50% in five years.

    The article ends with the point that, while this may seem like a “revolution,” it’s actually a “reversion.” European cities such as Paris and Antwerp (examples from the article) were both built before the advent of the car and were never really designed for it, although Haussmann’s wide avenues certainly helped. All of this gets back to a point I tried to make over the weekend with this post about driving and parking, and the relevance of urban form.

    Reversion is a lot easier than a revolution. And for most North American cities, a revolution is what’s needed if we are in fact serious about a post-car future.

    Photo by Z Klein on Unsplash

  • Guts and generosity

    Today’s Seth Godin post on innovation, guts, and generosity is Seth Godin at his best. One of the reasons why I like it is that I keep thinking that “innovative” has become too much of a buzzword. It’s similar to walking around and telling everybody you’re a cool person. If you have to explain it to everyone, then you’re probably not cool. At the same time, I also find his generosity angle to be a clever one. Here is Seth’s post in its entirety (short and sweet, as usual):

    Innovation is guts plus generosity

    Guts, because it might not work.

    And generosity, because guts without seeking to make things better is merely hustle.

    The innovator shows up with something she knows might not work (pause for a second, and contrast that with everyone else, who has been trained to show up with a proven, verified, approved, deniable answer that will get them an A on the test).

    If failure is not an option, then, most of the time, neither is success.

    It’s pretty common for someone to claim that they’re innovative when actually, all they are is popular, profitable or successful. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s not innovative.

    Allow generosity to take the lead and you’ll probably discover that it’s easier to find the guts.