Last month, Curated Properties submitted a rezoning and site plan application for a 6-storey, 25-unit building at 45 Dovercourt Road in Toronto. The project is known to the market as Cabin and you can register for it now.
The project immediately caught my attention (because of its design, because of its branding, and because I like the work of Curated), so I decided to dig in further and get a copy of their architectural drawings. Development applications and their supporting documents are all public. Anyone can request a copy. But the city isn’t great at making this known.
Since I’m excited to see more of these small scale urban infill projects in the city, today I thought I would highlight some of its key features and some of the things that are being proposed in order to make a project like this work.
The Homes
First of all, 100% of the suites are 2-storey. 76% of the suites are also 2 bedroom or larger.
The result is that the project is essentially a series of townhomes stacked on top of each other. I suspect that this will appeal to more end-users as opposed to investors. Hopefully, it will also attract more families to the area.
Here’s the third floor plan:
You probably can’t see it, but all of the suites are marked as “Level 1”, obviously indicating that there’s more than one level.
Also worth mentioning is the notch or cut out on the north side of the building. This is what makes the 2 suites in the middle of the floor plate possible. In order for them to have windows, they need to be setback from the (north) property line. It also means those suites get terraces.
The Parking
Turning to the ground floor plan, it’s interesting to see that they are proposing 8 triple car stackers that will be accessible off the rear laneway (right side on the plan below). That equates to 24 parking spaces in the building (8 bays x 3 cars per stacker).
On small urban sites like this one, it can be very difficult to accommodate parking. So it’s inevitable that we will see more parking stackers in the city and a continual reduction in parking minimums.
The Construction
Finally, I have been told that this project is expected to be framed in wood, as opposed to reinforced concrete, which is more typical of condominiums in Toronto.
As of the beginning of this year (2015), the Ontario Building Code was modified to allow wood-frame buildings up to 6 storeys. Before this change, the highest you could go was 4 storeys.
This change was done with the intent of reducing construction costs so that it becomes more feasible to develop smaller infill sites such as this one. So expect to see more of this.
I know that a lot of people would like to remain in the city even when they start having children. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable low-rise homes. And not everyone wants to live in a high-rise tower.
That’s why I think we will see more, not less, low-rise and mid-rise infill projects like Cabin. If you’re interested in this topic, also check out a post I wrote called 3 stages of intensification.
The rendering at the top of this post is from Curated Properties and the drawings are by RAW Design.
Since 2009 when the U.S. economy started to recover, housing starts (i.e. new residential construction) have favored multifamily buildings over single family housing. Apartment/condominium construction has grown 3 times faster according to the U.S. Census Bureau (via Bloomberg).
A lot of this multifamily construction is assumed to be rental apartments, but this category also includes for sale condominiums. The classification has to do with building typology rather than housing tenure. (I would love to see how the above graph breaks down in terms of the latter.)
The typical explanations for this trend often relate back to Millennials being poor and saddled with student debt. That’s why they’re
To be a real estate developer, or at least to be a good real estate developer, I think you need to have a certain kind of personality. Specifically, I think you need to be an optimist.
Because if you’re going to take big risks and deal with lots of uncertainty – which is how most development projects work – then you have to believe that you’re going to be able to figure it all out and make it happen.
That is not to say that you’re not worried about risk and you’re not thinking critically about what you’re doing. Managing risk is a hugely important part of the business.
Rather it’s accepting that unexpected things will come up, whether it’s a small construction hiccup or a huge black swan event. And knowing that if and when that happens, you’re going to do whatever it takes to get through it.
As an example, I remember a developer telling me a story about one of his projects in South Florida. This was back when I was in grad school so some of the details are a bit fuzzy.
But basically he had excavated a site for an underground parking garage and they had just finished pouring the foundations and first underground level. (Because of its high water table, underground parking garages are rare and expensive to build in South Florida.)
It’s then 2 ’clock in the morning and he gets a call from his engineer telling him that a hurricane is coming through. And that once it comes through the water is going to lift up his foundation from below and basically destroy it.
They immediately start brainstorming solutions and the engineer ultimately decides that if they fill up the hole with water before the hurricane comes through that it will weigh down the built structure and keep it intact.
So in the middle of the night, before a storm was about to hit, they’re all on-site pumping water into a big hole.
The storm eventually came and went and the engineer was right: the water-filled hole kept everything in place. So instead of spending what could have been millions, the developer probably spent tens of thousands on a water bill. That’s a much easier pill to swallow.
This, of course, wasn’t in the development pro forma or in the construction schedule. But it happened, as stuff invariably does. And for future projects, I’m sure it’ll be something he thinks about it.
But it’s all part of the game. And to be good at the game, I believe you need to be an optimist.
Last month, Curated Properties submitted a rezoning and site plan application for a 6-storey, 25-unit building at 45 Dovercourt Road in Toronto. The project is known to the market as Cabin and you can register for it now.
The project immediately caught my attention (because of its design, because of its branding, and because I like the work of Curated), so I decided to dig in further and get a copy of their architectural drawings. Development applications and their supporting documents are all public. Anyone can request a copy. But the city isn’t great at making this known.
Since I’m excited to see more of these small scale urban infill projects in the city, today I thought I would highlight some of its key features and some of the things that are being proposed in order to make a project like this work.
The Homes
First of all, 100% of the suites are 2-storey. 76% of the suites are also 2 bedroom or larger.
The result is that the project is essentially a series of townhomes stacked on top of each other. I suspect that this will appeal to more end-users as opposed to investors. Hopefully, it will also attract more families to the area.
Here’s the third floor plan:
You probably can’t see it, but all of the suites are marked as “Level 1”, obviously indicating that there’s more than one level.
Also worth mentioning is the notch or cut out on the north side of the building. This is what makes the 2 suites in the middle of the floor plate possible. In order for them to have windows, they need to be setback from the (north) property line. It also means those suites get terraces.
The Parking
Turning to the ground floor plan, it’s interesting to see that they are proposing 8 triple car stackers that will be accessible off the rear laneway (right side on the plan below). That equates to 24 parking spaces in the building (8 bays x 3 cars per stacker).
On small urban sites like this one, it can be very difficult to accommodate parking. So it’s inevitable that we will see more parking stackers in the city and a continual reduction in parking minimums.
The Construction
Finally, I have been told that this project is expected to be framed in wood, as opposed to reinforced concrete, which is more typical of condominiums in Toronto.
As of the beginning of this year (2015), the Ontario Building Code was modified to allow wood-frame buildings up to 6 storeys. Before this change, the highest you could go was 4 storeys.
This change was done with the intent of reducing construction costs so that it becomes more feasible to develop smaller infill sites such as this one. So expect to see more of this.
I know that a lot of people would like to remain in the city even when they start having children. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable low-rise homes. And not everyone wants to live in a high-rise tower.
That’s why I think we will see more, not less, low-rise and mid-rise infill projects like Cabin. If you’re interested in this topic, also check out a post I wrote called 3 stages of intensification.
The rendering at the top of this post is from Curated Properties and the drawings are by RAW Design.
Since 2009 when the U.S. economy started to recover, housing starts (i.e. new residential construction) have favored multifamily buildings over single family housing. Apartment/condominium construction has grown 3 times faster according to the U.S. Census Bureau (via Bloomberg).
A lot of this multifamily construction is assumed to be rental apartments, but this category also includes for sale condominiums. The classification has to do with building typology rather than housing tenure. (I would love to see how the above graph breaks down in terms of the latter.)
The typical explanations for this trend often relate back to Millennials being poor and saddled with student debt. That’s why they’re
To be a real estate developer, or at least to be a good real estate developer, I think you need to have a certain kind of personality. Specifically, I think you need to be an optimist.
Because if you’re going to take big risks and deal with lots of uncertainty – which is how most development projects work – then you have to believe that you’re going to be able to figure it all out and make it happen.
That is not to say that you’re not worried about risk and you’re not thinking critically about what you’re doing. Managing risk is a hugely important part of the business.
Rather it’s accepting that unexpected things will come up, whether it’s a small construction hiccup or a huge black swan event. And knowing that if and when that happens, you’re going to do whatever it takes to get through it.
As an example, I remember a developer telling me a story about one of his projects in South Florida. This was back when I was in grad school so some of the details are a bit fuzzy.
But basically he had excavated a site for an underground parking garage and they had just finished pouring the foundations and first underground level. (Because of its high water table, underground parking garages are rare and expensive to build in South Florida.)
It’s then 2 ’clock in the morning and he gets a call from his engineer telling him that a hurricane is coming through. And that once it comes through the water is going to lift up his foundation from below and basically destroy it.
They immediately start brainstorming solutions and the engineer ultimately decides that if they fill up the hole with water before the hurricane comes through that it will weigh down the built structure and keep it intact.
So in the middle of the night, before a storm was about to hit, they’re all on-site pumping water into a big hole.
The storm eventually came and went and the engineer was right: the water-filled hole kept everything in place. So instead of spending what could have been millions, the developer probably spent tens of thousands on a water bill. That’s a much easier pill to swallow.
This, of course, wasn’t in the development pro forma or in the construction schedule. But it happened, as stuff invariably does. And for future projects, I’m sure it’ll be something he thinks about it.
But it’s all part of the game. And to be good at the game, I believe you need to be an optimist.
Money and the economy, I’m sure, have something to do with the above trend. But I’m not convinced that it’s the whole story.
There are also shifts happening with respect to consumer preferences and with respect to how we plan and build our cities. That’s why I’m very interested in monitoring family formations and housing choices.
At the same time, I’m also a Millennial. And whenever I catch myself thinking a certain way, I assume that there are probably other Millennials out there who feel similarly.
Money and the economy, I’m sure, have something to do with the above trend. But I’m not convinced that it’s the whole story.
There are also shifts happening with respect to consumer preferences and with respect to how we plan and build our cities. That’s why I’m very interested in monitoring family formations and housing choices.
At the same time, I’m also a Millennial. And whenever I catch myself thinking a certain way, I assume that there are probably other Millennials out there who feel similarly.
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