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

  • We are hiring a development coordinator

    The development team at Slate Asset Management is again hiring for our Toronto office. We are looking for a coordinator to join the team and gain exposure to all aspects of our projects — everything from acquisitions to construction and close-out.

    For those of you who maybe aren’t familiar with all of our projects, feel free to check out Slate’s website or the “Developments” menu on this blog.

    We are always open to a variety of backgrounds; however, for this role, our ideal candidate would be someone with a bit of a design and/or construction background. Though I would encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel like you fit this description.

    Broadly speaking, our ambition with all coordinators is to have them quickly take on more responsibility and ultimately lead a portfolio of their own development projects. If this sounds interesting to you, the best way to apply is over on LinkedIn.

    Please also feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions about the opportunity.

    Image: 100 Lombard

  • California is set to ban gasoline cars by 2035

    According to this recent New York Times article, California is set to put into effect a new mandate that would require 100% of passenger vehicle sales in the state to be fully electric by 2035. Included within this mandate are also interim targets: 35% of all sales by 2026 and 68% of all sales by 2030.

    When I first read the article, my first thought was: “Isn’t 2035 kind of far away? Can’t we do this sooner?” And this is usually how my mind works when I see some date in the future. But then I remembered that EV sales last year in the US only totaled somewhere around 5% of all sales.

    So there is work to be done, and mandates like this will certainly help. As I understand it, this will be the first mandate of its kind in the US and also one of the strictest in the world. A lot of other countries have simply set targets, rather than all-out bans.

    This is what it means to lead. You do things before others.

  • A network of smart homes across the globe

    I was reading about Wander last night before bed. For those of you who aren’t familiar, they are a startup that is building a network of smart homes around the world so that people can live and work remotely. You rent these homes like you would a home on Airbnb, but the difference here is that Wander owns all of the homes and is working to create a very unique and consistent kind of experience. They also offer a membership that costs $200 per year and gives you benefits like discounts on bookings and early access to new properties. So far the company has raised $27 million to help build out this vision.

    This is all very interesting to me because I think it’s a great idea, and because 20 some years ago I wrote a business plan with a friend of mine that was almost identical to this. We were both still in undergrad and we had this hypothesis that a lot of people would love to find a way to live as citizens of the world. We obviously never did anything with that plan, but in looking back we were probably too early, even if we were right about people’s latent desires. Today, things feel very different. I think there’s little doubt that knowledge working has become more flexible. So I suspect we will see a lot more of these kinds of ideas going forward.

  • Proximity matters for knowledge spillovers

    I am at my most creative when I’m in the same room with other people and we are bouncing ideas around. There’s a compounding effect that takes place. One person says something and that then triggers a new idea. I find the whole experience very rewarding and, for me, it’s a reminder that creativity can be a process. It is also a reminder that proximity is important for those of us who have jobs that deal in creativity.

    We have spoken a lot about this on the blog, but here is an interesting and recent study that looked at knowledge transfers across different tech startups within one of the largest co-working spaces in the US. For context, the co-working space itself consisted of five floors, about 100,000 square feet, and housed 251 different startups. To measure knowledge transfer, the researchers looked at instances of a startup adopting a component of a peer’s technology stack.

    What they found was the following:

    • Knowledge exchange is greater amongst startups that are dissimilar
    • Close physical proximity greatly influences the chance of knowledge spillovers; however, this effect quickly falls off
    • After 20 meters or so, there’s almost no difference between being down the hall or being on a separate floor within the building
    • One of the ways you can counteract this last finding is to create shared spaces; startups with overlapping common areas, such as a kitchen, saw greater distances of influence

    In short: proximity matters.

    If you’d like to download a full copy of the study, click here.

  • Stairs and balconies

    Perhaps the two most distinctive features of Montreal’s low-rise architectural landscape are (1) lots of exterior stairs and (2) lots of balconies. (Their density is, of course, also noteworthy, particularly in a North American context.)

    The exterior stairs are somewhat curious to outsiders given all the snow the city gets. But it’s maybe a good case study and follow-up to yesterday’s post about 1925 Victoria Park Road and its proposed exterior corridors.

    As for the second feature, the Globe and Mail recently published this wonderful little ode to the Montreal balcony. It is a great reminder that, when designed well, people really do love balconies and exterior spaces.

    This is an ongoing debate in the world of multi-family development, and the outcomes often vary by city and sometimes by housing tenure. But at the end of the day, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t appreciate getting outside in the summer.

  • Project Profile: 1925 Victoria Park Road, Toronto

    A recent development proposal at 1925 Victoria Park Road (Toronto) by Well Grounded Real Estate (developer) and Partisans (architect) is noteworthy for a number of reasons:

    • The 12-storey, 168-suite residential mid-rise building is proposed to be built out of mass-timber.
    • It is targeting Toronto Green Standard Tier 4, which is a voluntary, difficult-to-achieve, and expensive sustainability target. It is the equivalent of net-zero and I believe the only projects to date that have achieved this level in the city are public projects.
    • The circulation spaces are exterior single-loaded corridors that face an internal courtyard. This approach is very common in some cities, but almost non-existent in Toronto. Usually because someone will cite our winters as being a problem and because double-loaded corridors are typically the most efficient (rentable area / gross construction area). But the benefits are that you don’t need to heat/cool these corridor spaces and you open up the possibility of suites with windows on both ends.
    • The design doesn’t generally follow the typical “pyramid-shaped confection” that has come to define Toronto mid-rise buildings, though it does seem to generally conform to the 45 degree angular planes that we love to obsess over. Instead, it is starting to resemble a typical European courtyard building. Good. For some more commentary on this, check out John Lorinc’s recent piece in the Globe and the Mail.

    This is unquestionably an ambitious project. And ambition is what cities need. So I am pleased to write about it today on the blog. If you’d like to learn more, check out their project website.

    Image: Partisans

  • On not going pens down

    Back in May, I wrote a post about time to market and managing costs in condominium projects. What I wrote then remains true and equally, if not more, important today. But given all the uncertainty that we are continuing to see in the market, I thought I would elaborate on a few points.

    It used to be the case, when I first started working on condominium projects back in 2007 or so, that you would go pens down on your design drawings while you launched pre-sales and worked toward meeting your construction financing requirements.

    Once you hit 50% sales, or maybe once you completely reached your financing hurdle, you would then call your architect back up and kindly ask them to get started on working drawings.

    And the reason you did it this way was because working drawings are kind of expensive and so you wanted to make sure that your sales were going to be there. You were also trying to push as many of your costs out to after you had your construction loan in place so that you had a lower peak equity requirement.

    You can’t do this today.

    Since the beginning of this year, we have seen average high-rise construction costs increase by about 12% in the Greater Toronto Area and, for the balance of this year, some are predicting as much as 4% per month. What this means is that if you wait like the old days, you will likely see costs run away from you and you won’t be able to finance your project based on the sales you do have in place.

    So what you want to do is not go pens down. Keep going on drawings. Start buying construction (i.e. tendering). And work toward locking in as many of your costs as possible.

    How much is ultimately up to you and the exact market conditions at the time. But I know a number of condominium developers now targeting at least 50% tendered, which means securing most of your key contracts: formwork, concrete & rebar supply, windows, M&E, and so on.

    A lot of us are hoping that costs will eventually come down and follow certain commodities in the near term. But as our cost consultant effectively said to me this week, “just because the price of cold-formed steel has come down, do you really think you’ll be able to walk into a BMW dealership and ask for a deep discount?”

  • Optimizing for cars

    Vox recently profiled what they are calling the deadliest road in America — a certain section of US-19 running along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is generally an 8-lane road — 9 at most intersections — and so as you might expect, it is place that was designed for cars.

    From 2017 to 2022, US-19 saw 34 pedestrian fatalities involving a car for every 100 miles. Indeed, this stat makes it the deadliest highway in the state of Florida for people on foot.

    The other telling stat for me is the road’s crosswalk spacing. This is a place that is lined with restaurants, hotels, and many other commercial uses, and yet the crosswalks are sometimes spaced miles apart.

    This kind of street scale is mind boggling for pedestrians. No one in their right mind is going to go out of their way a mile or two just to cross a road, and so it’s no wonder that people are jaywalking and that too many people are getting hit.

    I know that our tendency is to try and solve these problems with things like flashing lights, speed radars, and orange flags that people can unceremoniously waive as they cross the street. But at the end of the day, this is an urban design problem.

    Spaces that are optimized for cars are, by definition, not optimized for pedestrians. The choice is ours.

  • Introducing 100 Lombard

    Earlier this week, Slate Asset Management and Forum Asset Management submitted a new development proposal for 100 Lombard Street in downtown Toronto.

    At the time of writing this post, the applications (zoning by-law amendment and site plan control) hadn’t yet hit the city’s website. So here’s some information about the project, including its big moves:

    • This is the first mixed-use residential project in Toronto designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The proposal includes residential, office, and retail spaces.
    • Architecture by OMA and WZMH Architects. Heritage by ERA Architects. Landscape and public realm by Claude Cormier + Associés. Planning by Urban Strategies. Structure by Stephenson Engineering.
    • The principal architectural idea is to create a vertical urban village through a series of “urban rooms” interspersed throughout the tower. These spaces would serve as amenities for the building and house a variety of different functions. See above rendering.
    • The proposal introduces three important public realm moves: (1) a new public plaza that pays homage to the site’s former neighbor to the east — Second City; (2) a new mid-block pedestrian connection running north-south from Richmond Street East to Lombard Street; and (3) an outdoor public art gallery featuring oversized art tableaus.
    • The site currently houses one designated heritage building (86 Lombard Street), and the design contemplates relocating and fully retaining this building on the eastern edge of the site. Once you see the drawings, you’ll fully understand why this was the most logical move.

    The entire project team is very excited to get this proposal out and into the world. And we hope that you will see it as being representative of our ongoing and lasting commitment to elevating architecture, sustainability, culture, and city building in Toronto.

  • A few charts on the US housing market

    Here a three interesting charts about the US housing market from Redfin (via Charlie Bilello’s weekly newsletter).

    Bidding wars, which are defined as an offer with at least one other competing bid, declined from nearly 70% of sales at the beginning of this year to about 44% as of July 2022.

    Stale inventory, which is defined as a home sitting on the market for more than 30 days, is up 12.5% year-over-year. This is the highest jump since 2012, not counting the spike at the beginning of the pandemic (April 2020).

    The number of US homes that cut their asking price over the last 4 weeks is now up to 7.8% as of the first week of August 2022. This is the highest percentage since 2015. The seasonality exhibited in this chart is also interesting.

    All of this said, the median sale price for a home in the US is still up 8.2% on a year-over-year basis. Though since June of this year, prices have fallen about 4.1%. I don’t know about all of you, but I’d much rather be buying today than in January of this year.