Ace Hotel, LA by Dan Hogman on 500px
The word on the street right now is that Ace Hotel will be opening up a location in Toronto’s Fashion District at 51 Camden Street.
Unlike its other outposts around the world, which entailed the renovation of a historic building, this one will be a new build. And according to HotelChatter, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects have been retained for the project.
Already a demolition permit has been issued for the existing 3 storey office building:
For those of you who may not be familiar with the Ace Hotel brand, the first hotel opened in Portland in 1999 when 3 friends transformed a halfway house into an affordable hotel for creative types.
Since then, the hotel has expanded to New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Palm Springs, as well as many other cities, and has become a kind of cultural institution for the creative class.
I’m excited that they have (allegedly) picked Toronto for their next property and I’m excited that Shim-Sutcliffe will be (supposedly) designing it.
Community by Evgeny Tchebotarev on 500px
Toronto is the condo capital of North America. For a number of years now, there have been more condos under construction in this city compared to any other in North America, including New York.
But recently the real estate community has become incredibly interested in building multi-family apartments (also known as purpose-built rental buildings). Which is why about 7 months ago I wrote a post called, Rise of rental.
It has been decades since Toronto built rental apartment buildings at any sort of scale. That means that our existing stock is generally pretty old and that condominiums – rented out by individual investors – have been almost exclusively fulfilling the need for rental apartments in this city.
But given that purpose-built rental apartments are on the rise, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about them and about the consumer perspective.
And so here’s my question to you:
If you were looking for a place to rent, would it make a difference whether it was a condominium (rented out by an individual investor) or whether it was a professionally managed apartment building? You can assume that the suite itself is identical.
There are obviously many differences between both forms of tenure, but I’m curious to what extent that factors into the decision making process for consumers. It hasn’t really been an option in recent years, but that seems destined to change.
I hope we can have a discussion in the comment section below.
Image: Financial District, Downtown Toronto, Canada by Yeonju SEONG on 500px
Today I learned about something new called 2030 Districts. They are: “designated urban areas committed to meeting the energy, water, and transportation emissions reduction targets of the 2030 Challenge for Planning.”
Toronto’s new 2030 District is downtown, which is bound by the lake in the south, Bathurst Street in the west, Dupont Street and Rosedale Valley in the north, and the Don Valley in the east.
It’s the first district outside of the US. The other established districts are in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Denver, Stamford, San Francisco, and Dallas.
The goals for Toronto’s district are as follows (quoted from 2030 Districts):
To cut district-wide emissions in half, including zero-emissions from new buildings by 2030.
Support a better understanding of where and why energy use, water use, and GHG emissions occur across the District.
Work in partnership with building owners, service providers and conservation groups to accelerate the adoption of best practices for building design and management.
Facilitate broad stakeholder dialogues to uncover and overcome systemic barriers to long term reductions in energy use, water use and GHG emissions.
I’m looking forward to following and learning more about this initiative. I think many of us can agree that producing less, not more, GHG emissions in the future would be preferable. And we know that the bulk of it comes from both buildings and transportation.