I very much enjoy the branding and marketing side of the development business. It’s probably an architect / designer thing. So I’m always looking out for interesting case studies.
Recently I came across The Flynn in Chelsea, New York. The developer is IGI and the agency is Winkreative.
What they did was create a namesake character named Flynn. Everything then became about a day in the life of.
The Instagram account is flynninthecity. They made colorful animations. And they even partnered with the Spring Street Social Society to host in-person performance art pieces. The Being Flynn series was a bunch of vignettes that combined “dance and physical comedy” and highlighted a cast of fictional characters who all, of course, reside at The Flynn.
As you all know, selling condos is typically about selling a lifestyle. A dream. In this case, they created a character to show you exactly what that dream should be.
Real estate marketing can sometimes often be cheesy. But I thought this was a clever and overall creative approach. Winkreative does great work.
What do you think of the approach?
Image: Winkreative
This month the White House released a Housing Development Toolkit. The report starts by talking about the local barriers to building and makes this statement:
“The growing severity of undersupplied housing markets is jeopardizing housing affordability for working families, increasing income inequality by reducing less-skilled workers’ access to high-wage labor markets, and stifling GDP growth by driving labor migration away from the most productive regions.”
It then goes on to highlight a number of tools that American cities have adopted or should adopt “to promote healthy responsive, affordable, high-opportunity housing markets.”
They are:
Establishing by-right development
Taxing vacant land or donate it to non-profit developers
Streamlining or shortening permitting processes and timelines
Eliminate off-street parking requirements
Allowing accessory dwelling units
Establishing density bonuses
Enacting high-density and multifamily zoning
Employing inclusionary zoning
Establishing development tax or value capture incentives
Using property tax abatements
None of this will be news to regulars of this blog. We have spoken about almost every single tool in the above list.
I’m not necessarily sold on all of them (good discussion to have), but I have gone on ad nauseam about eliminating parking minimums (off-street parking); the value of accessory dwelling units (commonly called laneway housing here in Toronto); and the negative impacts of barriers to building.
The good news is that there’s growing alignment around a similar set of actions. Change takes time. There’s usually a heavy bias towards the status quo.
Last night I participated in an excellent dinner discussion with a group of planners, architects, city officials, and politicians from Amsterdam. They were visiting Toronto to see first hand what rapid intensification has done to this city. And I very much appreciated the invite. Thank you.
My message was that intensification has created a far more vibrant and exciting city compared to 15 or so years ago. It’s hard to know what exactly could be correlated with intensification, but we have certainly seen an explosion of culture, innovation, and pride in this city – among many other things. (It could be all Drake’s doing.)
However, the counter argument at the dinner table was that Toronto is letting unfettered development produce unremarkable architecture. We are simply building glass tower after glass tower. And I know that, for many of you, this will ring true. I hear it all the time, including in the comments of this blog.
Now, I will be the first to admit that there has been a lot of shit built in this city. No argument there. Some people have no taste. But at the same time, I think it’s myopic to assume that it’s strictly because of profit-motivated developers.
Oftentimes the perception is that development projects are awash in cash. There’s tons of money in which to do the right thing. Developers just need to stop being so greedy and start being more creative.
The reality is that developers operate within a market. There are real limits to what people will pay for new space. And when, for instance, land prices go through the roof (an input), municipal fees jump (cost of doing business), and approvals drag (time value of money), guess where everyone starts looking for savings? In the build.
I say this not to justify building crap. If I had it my way, everything would be beautiful. I champion design whenever possible. I say it simply to shed light on the process. Because when we all understand the factors at a play, I believe we all become more effective at finding solutions.