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 Graham Donnelly

  • Why Utah wants to build the world’s longest and most expensive urban gondola

    If you drive around the Cottonwood Heights neighborhood in Salt Lake City, which I have done multiple times over the last year, you will invariably see lawn signs shouting for “no gondola!” And the reason for this is that last summer, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) came forward with its preferred solution to traffic congestion in Little Cottonwood Canyon: an eight-mile long gondola all the way up and into the mountains. If built, this would apparently be the longest and most expensive urban gondola in the world.

    To try and explain why this is being recommended, I’ll give the example of what happened to us when we were there last week. We drove into Little Cottonwood Canyon on Tuesday morning when it was not snowing. We left Park City around 8am, passed through the valley (Salt Lake City), and arrived at Snowbird (resort) in around 45 minutes. This is normally how long it takes. But on the way up it started snowing, and it didn’t stop all day. (Nice!) So our drive home took significantly longer and looked like this (we were going 8-10 miles per hour all the way down):

    This is what happens when it snows in the canyons. Which is why a wise bartender at one of the resorts advised us that, “on powder days, you need to leave the valley at 6AM. Because at some point, some asshole is going to think they can get up the canyon in a Tesla, and they will ruin it for everyone. It’s better to nap in your car at the resort than white knuckle for 2-3 hours.” During our drive home, we learned that he was not at all joking. This is what happens. And it is why UDOT wants to build one really long urban gondola.

    There are, however, some very good reasons why urban gondolas aren’t really that common. Portland has one. Medellín has one. And apparently both are quite successful. But other than these examples, they generally aren’t thought of as the most effective tool in the transportation arsenal:

    Gondolas are low-capacity vehicles that quickly get cramped if turned into high capacity ones. They don’t work well for multiple stops. As a result, they are a point-to-point transportation method with low capacity. They are also expensive, especially relative to how many people they might serve, making them financially unattractive options for most applications. At their best, gondolas work when traversing difficult terrain with a consistent but low ridership, which is why they’re most often deployed on ski resorts.

    But this situation is maybe a bit unique. It’s kind of urban transport, but really it’s for people to get up the canyon and shred deep powder. Here’s more on how it might work:

    The Cottonwood Canyon gondola would be a hybrid of sorts between urban transportation solution and resort-based gondola. The proposal is to build a massive 2,500-spot parking garage at the base of the canyon, about 20 miles from downtown and the airport, where people will park. They will then ride the gondola for 27 minutes to Snowbird or 37 minutes to Alta, a trip duration which has no parallel in the urban or resort gondola scene (the Snowbird tram, one of the most famous in the world, fits more than 100 people per tram but takes less than 10 minutes to ride). Even though the gondola would serve two ski resorts, it belongs more to the urban gondola concept because it is being proposed and recommended by the state’s transportation department as a solution to a recurring traffic problem.

    As a snowboarder, this sounds great. But it is, of course, complicated. Conservation groups are objecting, and some/many taxpayers don’t want to pay for a gondola that will largely benefit two ski resorts. Especially one that doesn’t permit snowboarders (I made this part up). So we’ll see. A final decision is expected by UDOT this summer. In the meantime, if you’re interested in urban gondolas, check out this recent article in Vice Magazine by Aaron Gordon (quoted above). He does a good job explaining both sides of this debate. And if you are interested in this topic, I’d be curious to hear whether you think this is a good idea or not.

  • A template for opposing new housing

    Okay, I really don’t want to make this — using ChatGPT to write my blog posts for me — a habit. But I was genuinely curious what would happen if I asked it to: “write a stereotypical NIMBY letter opposing a new housing development.” Here’s what it generated.

    Dear Sir/Madam,

    I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed housing development in our neighborhood. While I understand the need for affordable housing in our city, I believe that this project would have a detrimental impact on our community.

    First and foremost, the proposed development is simply too large for our area. The increase in population density would put a strain on our already overburdened infrastructure, leading to increased traffic congestion, noise pollution, and strain on our public services. Additionally, the construction of this project would result in significant environmental damage, destroying natural habitats and putting wildlife at risk.

    Furthermore, the type of housing being proposed is simply not in keeping with the character of our neighborhood. This development would bring in a large number of low-income residents, which could lead to increased crime rates and other negative social effects. It would also drastically alter the aesthetic of our area, replacing the existing greenery and open spaces with a monolithic, high-density housing complex.

    Finally, I am deeply concerned about the impact this development would have on property values in the surrounding area. The influx of low-income residents could result in a decline in property values, making it difficult for current residents to sell their homes and move elsewhere.

    In conclusion, I strongly urge you to reconsider this proposed housing development. While I recognize the need for affordable housing, I believe that this project is simply not the right fit for our neighborhood. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

    Sincerely, [Your Name]

    I must say that I’m impressed. It is a solid 5-paragraph letter that follows a tried and true formula. First, the entire letter is sandwiched between thinly veiled statements around the importance of housing. Both the introduction and conclusion speak to “the need for affordable housing.”

    And then in the middle of the letter, it hits on the holy trinity of opposition arguments: (1) overburdened/inadequate infrastructure, (2) neighborhood character, and (3) property values. I’m not sure there’s much to improve on here. These computers are good.

    So if you happen to need one of these, you may want to try ChatGPT.

  • Calm down, Dubai

    Knight Frank just published the 17th edition of its annual “The Wealth Report.” I have spoken about this report many times before on the blog because I generally find them really interesting. So today I’d like to share two items from this latest one.

    The first item is their most recent Prime International Residential Index (PIRI). What this does is track prime residential prices across 100 key city, sun, and ski locations. “Prime”, in case you are wondering, is defined as the most desirable and most expensive properties in each market — generally the top 5%.

    Look at Dubai go:

    When I see a chart like this I usually start at the top and then immediately start scanning for Toronto. Here, it’s more or less in the middle with a 4.1% increase. Totally reasonable. Prime property in Auckland and Wellington, on the other hand, didn’t fair as well in 2022.

    The second item is this very wonderful diagram showing flight connectivity before Covid (12 months to March 2020) and then post-Covid (12 months to December 2022):

    The way to read this diagram is that the most connected cities — ranked by the number and quality of flight connections — get pushed toward the center. They also get bigger. Less connected cities, on the other hand, slide toward the edges. All of the cities also generally gravitate toward their main regional connections.

    The most obvious change is the greatly weakened connectivity of Chinese cities. This is not surprising given their zero-Covid approach. Moscow also seems to get rightly pushed out to the side.

    Another story is the continued rise of both Singapore (to the likely detriment of Hong Kong) and Dubai. I have only been to Dubai once, and I couldn’t figure out how to navigate its sea of roads and highways, or how to locate an actual city center where humans walk around (though the historic Bur Dubai area was interesting).

    But there is no denying that Dubai has become a pretty important global city.

  • The occasional good decision

    Perhaps the greatest lesson from Warren Buffet’s most recent letter to Berkshire shareholders is that, to be wildly successful, you only have to be right sometimes:

    In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck.

    Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years – and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors such as Berkshire.

    The lesson for investors: The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders. And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.

    So-so decisions. Periodic moments of brilliance. And a long-term patient outlook. These are, I think, important things to keep in mind. It’s okay to make mistakes; you just have to keep going.

  • Beautiful brick mid-rise proposed for Toronto’s Junction neighborhood

    Last week, Sierra Communities (developer) and my friend Gabriel Fain (architect of Mackay Laneway House fame) submitted the above development proposal for 2760 Dundas Street West in the Junction. It is a beautiful proposal. So not surprisingly, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are the first batch of comments from Urban Toronto:

    It also happens to be one block west of our Junction House project, so I definitely would have been annoyed if somebody proposed something ugly here. I am 99.9% biased, but I think the Junction has some of the best new mid-rise buildings in the city. Presumably, this is what “Mrgeosim” was getting at with their comment about “the number of good proposals for this neighbourhood.”

    But here’s the thing. This is a relatively small proposal. It’s a 6-storey mid-rise building with 28 new homes on top of a tiny 482 square meter site (16m frontage). This makes it a challenging new development to execute on. So the fact that this is required to go through the typical rezoning and site plan processes is, in my opinion, a painful problem.

    We should be doing everything we can to encourage these kinds of new housing developments all across the city. And that necessarily means removing as many barriers as possible. A pair of development applications and a few community meetings may seem benign, but they’re not. They add time and real costs that then need to be passed onto future residents.

    There is also a very valid question around what kind of development charges (or impact fees) we should be levying on projects of this scale. If you want to build a laneway suite in the City of Toronto, you can have the development charges deferred and eventually forgiven. Why? Because we want more rental housing and we have arguably recognized that it’s important for project feasibility.

    Should the same apply if you’re building 2 new homes, or perhaps 28 new homes? At what point should the “impacts” kick in and the fees be levied? And might there be an argument that adding many new homes on top of small 482 square meter parcels is actually an incredibly efficient way of using existing public infrastructure? I think so.

    Congratulations to the team on a beautiful proposal! I’m looking forward to this being our neighbor.

    Image: Gabriel Fain Architects

  • The impact of climate change on the Winter Olympics

    It was pure luck, but we couldn’t have timed this last week any better. It started snowing in the mountains around Salt Lake City on Tuesday, and it felt like it didn’t stop until Saturday. On Wednesday morning, which was peak powder, the main resorts were reporting anywhere between 23″ and 30″ of fresh now. It was the stuff of magical dreams.

    But snowfall is, of course, highly variable. SLC is having a record year, whereas many resorts in Europe weren’t able to open until mid-January because of a lack of snow. And from a macro perspective, things are generally getting worse. According to this report, for every one degree increase in the world’s average temperature, global snow cover is reduced by about 8%.

    What this mean is that, even in low emission scenarios, many of the places that previously hosted the Winter Olympics, may struggle to do so again in the future because of “non-reliable” snow cover. Freestyle ski and snowboard, for example, typically wants a minimum of 1 meter of snowpack as a base, and sometimes more if melting is expected.

    Things do not look positive for Vancouver, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and even Chamonix in the below chart. (And as a further blow, the authors of the report also don’t know how to spell Vancouver.) Naturally, this is something that you might want to consider when looking at long-term investments that are dependent on fresh snow.

    You can, however, ignore Sochi in the above chart. Because this was never a great place for the Winter Olympics and it’s unclear to me why this place was ever chosen (other than for presumably nefarious reasons). It’s like: “We are one of the largest and coldest countries in the world. We have a lot of snow in Russia. But for fun, let’s choose one of the few places with a sub-tropical climate.”

    Excluding Sochi, though, this is an alarming chart.

  • Segways, scooters, and AI-powered electric shoes

    The original Segway launched in 2000 and was supposed to revolutionize micro-mobility and the “last-mile problem” associated with getting around cities. Instead, only about 140,000 units were sold in the following two decades and, in 2020, the company stopped production on the namesake vehicle. In hindsight this seems kind of obvious. Segways are/were clunky and expensive. There’s a learning curve. And it’s infinitely difficult to look even remotely cool while riding one.

    But one thing they did get right was the problem. There was in fact a need for micro-mobility solutions, which is why we have seen bike share and e-scooter ridership grow, like this, since the late 2000’s. I think it remains to be seen just how ubiquitous things like e-scooters will become in our cities. But in 2021, there were 900,000 electric scooters sold in France alone. So we’re already doing much better than the Segway did during its lifetime.

    As I have said before, I am a big fan of electric scooters. And I wish that Toronto would stop being so conservative with allowing them in the city. But I remain open to other ideas, so here’s another last-mile solution to consider: $1,400 AI-powered electric shoes. Casey Neistat recently reviewed them in New York City and, I can safely say, that they look Segway-like in terms of their clunkiness and overall attractiveness. They’re still in the prototype phase and they do make you walk about 250% faster; but I’m not yet convinced.

    How about you?

  • The most expensive new subway line in the world

    In other New York City news, they apparently have the most expensive new subway line in the world:

    At $2.5 billion per mile, construction costs for the 1.8-mile Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway were 8 to 12 times more expensive than similar subway projects in Italy, Istanbul, Sweden, Paris, Berlin and Spain, according to a report from New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management.

    This is an important problem because public transit is good for cities:

    It is not possible to outdo the subway in capacity per amount of land consumed— and in a high-demand city, 12-lane freeways are prohibitively land-intensive. Hook (1994) argued that Japan focused on rail transportation in its largest cities because it had high land values in the postwar era and such strong property rights that widespread land condemnation for freeways based on the American model was impossible.

    If this is a topic that interests you, I would encourage you to check out the report, as well as their Transit Costs Project website. It allows you to compare transit project costs for 159 different cities.

  • New York City appoints first Chief Public Realm Officer

    This could be a good idea:

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams today appointed Ya-Ting Liu as the city’s first-ever chief public realm officer, delivering on a key promise from his State of the City address. In this newly created role, Liu will coordinate across city government, community organizations, and the private sector to create extraordinary public spaces across the entire city and continue to drive the city’s economic recovery.

    As chief public realm officer, Liu will focus on delivering two components of Mayor Adams’ “Working People’s Agenda.” She will execute on a plan to invest $375 million to create and expand high-quality public spaces in all five boroughs, which includes the Broadway Vision plan, a full reconstruction of Jamaica Avenue from Sutphin Boulevard to Merrick Boulevard, and permanent upgrades to Open Streets in the Bronx and on Staten Island. At the same time, she will lead the administration’s work to deliver a permanent outdoor dining program in partnership with the City Council that works for businesses and residents, building on the massive success of the pandemic-era temporary Open Restaurants program, with clear design guidelines and accessible tools for restaurant owners and communities.

    When done right, public spaces have been proven to promote economic development. Perhaps the most obvious example in New York is the High Line. The first two phases cost around $153 million to construct, and as of 2014 it was already attracting some 5 million visitors a year and thought to be responsible for over $2 billion of economic activity. As of 2019, the number of annual visitors had increased to 8 million.

    So if New York ends up with more of these spaces — you know, enjoyable spaces that attract lots of humans and investment — this could be a good idea.

  • Cascading house in Park City lists for $29,000,000

    We were having pizza at Davanza’s the other night and I started flipping through one of those real estate magazines that you find scattered around places like Park City.

    Now, more often than not, when I come across a house listed for tens of millions of dollars, I usually look at it and think to myself, “okay, I know this is a really expensive home and it is likely that someone will want to buy it, but I objectively don’t like it.”

    However, as I was flipping through the magazine, I came across this listing and instead thought, “hey, this is actually a really cool house.”

    Designed by Wallace Cunningham, the 8,000 sf home features a cascading roof line that looks like an “S” in plan. (It also seems like all of the interior spaces were laid out in service of this plan design, which, depending on your own architectural proclivities, could be considered either a perfectly fine thing or an arbitrary thing.)

    It’s an interesting house. So here’s a video tour.