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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  • Bowling Lane House, Calgary

    I just finished going through the work of Studio North. My friend Peter introduced me to them through this Globe article. 

    They are a Calgary-based design-build practice that have completed a number of laneway houses, as well as bigger projects such as this 34 unit townhouse project in Canmore, Alberta.

    What (not surprisingly) caught my attention was their focus on laneway/accessory dwellings. Pictured above is their Bowling Lane House in Crescent Heights, Calgary. 

    It’s a 700 sf one-bedroom house that sits behind a 1920′s heritage house. Here is an axonometric of that relationship (the existing house was made transparent):

    Here is an elevation from the main street. Look at how neatly it tucks behind the existing house. All you really notice is the garage of Bowling Lane House.

    Here is how Bowling Lane House fits into its laneway.

    And here are two images of the double height space that they managed to create within this 700 sf house.

    Notwithstanding that this is a wider lot than what you might typically find in Toronto, it is precisely the kind of housing – both in terms of design quality and scale – that I was trying to create with Mackay Laneway House. It’s also where I was planning to move.

    Kudos to the Studio North team for driving this initiative in Calgary. You can check out the rest of their projects here. They have a number of other laneway houses within their portfolio. And all of them are beautiful.

    All images from Studio North.

  • Junction House Community Meeting

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    Okay, last Toronto-centric post for the week. We are back to regular scheduled programming tomorrow.

    Later this month, Councillor Gord Perks will be hosting a community meeting for Junction House (see conceptual rendering above).

    You can find all of the details, here, on the Globizen blog. But pop it into your calendars: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 from 7 to 9pm.

    Even if you can’t attend, definitely weigh in on the rooftop public art component over in the comments on the Globizen blog.

    I hope to see you all there. It’s always nice when happy people come out.

  • Bringing laneway suites to Toronto

    This morning I presented and sat on a panel at BILD called “bringing laneway suites to Toronto.” The other participants were Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, George Pantazis (Planner at the City of Toronto), Mike Collins-Williams (Director, Policy at OHBA), and Andrew Sorbara (co-founder of Lanescape).

    Here is a photo that Mike took of me while I was talking about my failed laneway house:

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    For those of you wondering if/when this will happen in Toronto, here are the key takeaways from this morning: The city is already drafting laneway suite policies specific to Toronto & East York (not the other parts of the city) and they are due to report back to council in Q2-2018. Nothing is 100% certain at this stage, but there’s lots of optimism. 

    Councillor McMahon delivered this morning’s opening remarks and I was impressed by her deep commitment to laneway suites. I was also impressed by her stance on NIMBYISM, saying that education is important and that we can’t let NIMBYs stop what makes sense for the greater city.

    She gave the example of the 6 storey condominium in her ward that faced fierce community opposition a number of years back. If you can’t put a midrise building on a main street in this city, where can you put it? 

  • New Buca concept coming to midtown Toronto

    Earlier today Slate announced that King Street Food Company will be bringing a new Buca restaurant concept to the north west corner of Yonge + St. Clair in 2018. 

    (BlogTO calls Buca one of the best Italian restaurants in the city.)

    Below is a rendering of the new podium design at 2 St. Clair West, which is where they’ll be going. The design/rendering is by Gensler (the same talented group that did Ravine Bench).

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    The corner is going to be transformed into a double-height space and the architecture is meant to express that feeling of grandeur at the intersection. There will also be an outdoor patio at grade.

    We are all super excited about this.

    If you would like to read the full press release, you can do that here.

  • Strandkorb — a low tech solution to the elements

    I recently discovered this marvelous chair (image from here):

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    It’s called a strandkorb, which is a German word that translates into something along the lines of “hooded beach chair.” It was invented in the late 19th century by a basket maker looking for protection from the elements on the beach.

    Apparently they are fairly ubiquitous at resorts along the North Sea and Baltic Sea and are a bit of a cult object in Germany. They are a symbol of holiday fun, but also, to some, a symbol of German resiliency in the face of adverse weather.

    For me, the beauty of these beach chairs is that the “hood” blocks the wind. So if you orient yourself toward the sun, you could actually feel quite warm even when it may not be the perfect beach weather. They extend the season, which is paramount in cooler climates.

    I guess that’s why they have stuck around since the 1880′s. If you check out some of the (Google) photo spheres in beach towns in northern Germany, you will definitely find many a strandkorb.

  • A cohousing case study

    There’s a lot of interest right now in micro apartments. Here is a recent example from New York City. Generally speaking the model is driven by a need to increase housing affordability: shrink the apartments; lower the prices. 

    To compensate for these smaller units, the buildings are often equipped with larger shared spaces and a desire to create a sense of community.

    The below TED talk by architect Grace Kim is an interesting case study of a project that started, first, with a desire for cohabitation. Her thesis is that cohousing can make us happier, less lonely, and more socially connected.

    The cohousing community that she profiles is one that she both designed and developed and one that she now lives in and practices architecture out of.

    If you can’t see the video below, click here. It’s only 10 minutes. After you’ve watched it, let us know in the comment section below if this is a community you could see yourself being a part of.

  • 738,000 single-family homes were built last year in the US

    The New York Times recently published “a portrait of new single-family homes” in the US in 2016. Here’s that portrait:

    For those of those living in dense urban centers, this portrait is perhaps a reminder that in many other places a large single-family home can be had for about the price of a studio apartment.

    Nothing in the above portrait likely surprised you, but it’s interesting to note that over half of all new single family homes delivered last year were in “The South.” Only 7% were built in the dense northeast.

    The New York Times also recently looked at “international rents per square foot” using data from RentCafe. Here they are:

    New York City sits at the top with an average rent of $4.98 psf. This is across all boroughs. I am surprised by how low some of these international rents are. But averages rarely tell you the whole story.

    In any event, I do think that these two graphics start to speak to the economic spikiness that we are seeing across the US. 

  • Geography is no longer destiny

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    The Q3 2017 Moneytree Report from PwC and CB Insights was recently released. It tracks venture capital trends in the US and globally. 

    Last quarter, US venture capital-backed companies saw $19 billion in total funding across 1,207 deals. Perhaps most notably for the US, funding in the NY metro area rose 57% to $4.227 billion and inched out the San Francisco Bay Area ($4.177 billion).

    But this was really because of two epic rounds to WeWork (NYC HQ) totalling around $2.5 billion. Also, Silicon Valley ($2.2 billion) is tracked separately to the San Francisco Bay Area in the report.

    Still, there’s a real sense that the New York tech ecosystem is on the rise and that it is probably furthest ahead in the US in terms of being able to catch up to California.

    Last week, MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) went public. Albert Wenger, who is an investor in the company, argued on his blog that this is an important milestone for technology companies based in New York. 

    It’s the first core technology company (instead of applied technology company) to go public in the city and it’s a big step forward in terms of demonstrating that “geography is no longer destiny.” 

    You don’t have to move to the Bay Area to win in tech.

  • Toronto’s first Airbnb-friendly condo building

    This week it was announced that the very first condo building in Toronto (and in Canada) has just signed on to Airbnb’s Friendly Buildings Program. The agreement will take effect on November 1, 2017.

    As the name suggests, the program is about bringing greater legitimacy and structure to short-term Airbnb rentals. Here are two key measures from this particular agreement:

    – Building security will now have full transparency with respect to who is hosting and who their guests are at any given time

    – Airbnb will share 5% of the building’s revenue with the condominium corporation (hosts will also need to pay $50/month to cover any additional maintenance costs)

    What’s compelling about the above is that there’s now a bit of a financial incentive for buildings/boards to support Airbnb rentals. 

    At the same time, if something happens, it’ll now be a lot easier to figure out who was responsible and then chargeback any relevant costs. Right now it’s all happening under the radar.

    My view on Airbnb is the same as the one I took (publicly on this blog) on Uber: It’s not going away. Many people clearly want it. An entire building just accepted it. So let’s figure out how to make it work better.

    One regulation that Toronto is currently exploring and that I think will materialize in some form is a limit on short-term rentals when the unit is not your principal residence.

    This is the difference between Airbnb’ing your place when you leave on vacation (or when you have an extra room) and buying a condo strictly as a short-term rental investment.

    It’s interesting to see the evolution of companies like Uber and Airbnb. Both would never have been successful if they started out by first asking for permission. 

    But now they are mature enough that they are being forced to play nice.

  • Locals hate you

    BlogTO recently reported that “snarky anti-condo signs” have been popping up around Toronto. Here is one of them via Instagram. It reads (in all caps): Dear Condo Dwellers: Locals Hate You Go Fuck Yourself. 

    I find these posters curious, though it is obvious that they are a reaction to growth, intensification, and general change in this city.

    For one, it implies that condo dwellers and locals are mutually exclusive. In other words, “locals” don’t live in condos. Presumably the implication is that they live in low-rise grade-related single-family housing. Or maybe they live in rental housing? Is it a tenure thing?

    According to the latest 2016 Census data, just over 26% of private dwellings in Toronto are condominiums. And about 30% of people live in a building that has 5 or more storeys. If you include “apartments” less than 5 storeys, this latter number jumps to 40%. So many potential non-locals.

    However, it could be that these posters are primarily directed toward new condos and new condo dwellers. This poster seems to have been plastered in front of this recently completed condo building on College Street.

    If that is the case, then I wonder if there is a temporal cut-off for the hate. For example, the condo building that houses (at its base) my regular grocery store was completed in 1983. 

    The units are large and the demographic seems to skew a bit older. Are these condo dwellers – some of which may have been there for over 3 decades – to be hated? Are they non-locals? Or does urban myopia set in after awhile and they become locals?

    At the same time, it wouldn’t be unusual for the residents of an older condo building to oppose a new proposed condo building. So perhaps “local” isn’t about building typology and it’s more about who came first. That’s certainly a tricky one. Better end here.

    A curious poster that could use a bit more specificity. What do you make of it?