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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Tag: christmas

  • Merry Christmas

    For those of you who celebrate, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

    This year has been a hectic year for many; certainly for those of us in real estate. I’ve heard a lot of people tell me that they’ve “never worked so hard only to feel like they have accomplished so little.”

    Looking back at what I wrote on the first day of this year, I was wrong about many of my 2023 predictions. I thought the interest rate hikes would be over by the first quarter of the year and that the spring would bring greater optimism for new development projects.

    This was partially true — we did see some buoyancy around spring — but then further increases over the summer really quashed the pre-construction condominium market and overall developer sentiment for basically the rest of the year.

    I also thought that we would see distress within the industry in the first half of the year. That didn’t quite play out, as far as I can tell, and I now think that 2024 will be the year for this.

    All of this said, I do feel that 2023 was a highly productive year. I’m proud of what I accomplished both personally and professionally. And this holiday season, I’m looking forward to slowing things down, spending time with family and friends, and catching up on some life management.

    Hopefully you are all able to do something similar. Merry Christmas, everyone.

  • Merry Christmas from Toronto

  • Merry Christmas everyone

    I’m taking the day off from blogging (kind of), but I would be remiss if I didn’t leave you all with something city related. And so here is an article by Bloomberg CityLab talking about how the quality of municipal Christmas trees can serve as a kind of proxy for a city’s current state of affairs. In other words, the inability to execute on a reasonably good Christmas tree is perhaps a signal of other municipal problems.

    For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope that you’re somewhere with a tree that doesn’t look like a toilet brush or a plucked chicken (these are some of the dubious monikers that have been given to bad Christmas trees around the world). I know that this is not the Christmas we all ideally want. This time of year can be lonely without family and friends. But I think we have every reason to be optimistic about 2021.

    I wish you all health and happiness. Merry Christmas everyone.

    Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

  • Merry Christmas, everyone

    The frenetic run-up to Christmas has come to an end, and I’m looking forward to relaxing and taking it easy with family and friends. I hope that all of you are able to do the same, however you spend the holidays. This is the one time of the year when the email firehose completely shuts off and it’s a lot easier to do exactly that. I think that’s important for all of us.

    This past year I found it particularly difficult to disconnect. And 2020 is on deck to be an even bigger year. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am, however, going to take this time to slow down, read, write, travel, and likely drink a bunch of wine. As always, you’ll find me here on the blog every morning. Merry Christmas, everyone.

    P.S. The Toronto Raptors are hosting their first ever Christmas Day game.

  • Merry Christmas

    Merry Christmas from Rio de Janeiro. 

    Even though I am still practicing my daily blogging ritual, this is about the only time of the year where I find it’s possible to “disconnect” a little. So hopefully you’re doing a bit of that yourself and spending time with family and friends, regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas or not.

    The above photo was taken from the feet of the Christ the Redeemer statue at the top of Corcovado mountain. Excluding its base, which is about 8m tall, the statue itself is 30m in height. That’s basically the same height as Junction House (a 9 storey midrise condominium).

  • The Christmas slowdown

    It has been a busy year end. No slowdown whatsoever on my end as I make my way through the last week of the year in the office. Because I love what I do so much (I’m grateful for that), I have a habit of getting completely absorbed in my work. That’s a good thing, but it also means I probably neglect other things, like I have with my Christmas shopping this year.

    So I’m looking forward to the holiday slowdown so that I can spend more time with family and friends, workout more, and dedicate more time to this blog and photography. 

    I’m also going to be traveling after Christmas. And since I’ve been feeling lately that I need to challenge myself more with this blog, expect it to skew toward a travel/photoblog for about a week. I am sure it will still relate to many of the topics that we regularly discuss on this blog. Or maybe it won’t.

    What are your plans for the holidays?

  • Merry Christmas

    Merry Christmas everyone! And, thank you all for reading this past year.

    I just checked into an Airbnb in Mont-Tremblant, Québec and will be spending the next few days here with family and friends. I’ve also brought along some of my favorite wines (see above) and, obviously, my snowboard.

    Hopefully that wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, that you’re with family and/or friends. I know that this time of year can be lonely for some people when things quiet down. So hopefully you have good people to spend it with.

  • [Video] Interview with designer Marcel Wanders

    I just got home from Christmas dinner and I am so full that I can barely keep my eyes open. So rather than attempt to write something insightful, I am going to share a 2 minute interview with designer Marcel Wanders.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w78Bjfscii0?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

    It’s a short piece, but he covers some interesting topics such as his office culture and the value of Amsterdam for their creative process (specifically the city’s openness and tolerance).

    Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. 

    And sometime before the end of the year I’m going to do a summary of 2015 on ATC and make some predictions for 2016. I haven’t really done the prediction part before, but I think it would be a good practice to start.

    Until tomorrow 😴

  • Merry Christmas from post-tribe Toronto

    Belfast Christmas Market by Peter Holloway on 500px.com

    https://500px.com/embed.js

    Merry Christmas and/or happy whatever you happen to celebrate around this time of year.

    Hopefully things have slowed down for you all and you’re relaxing with family and friends either at home or somewhere on vacation. I’ll be doing that here in Toronto and making pancakes for breakfast, because that’s what I like to do on Christmas morning.

    If you’re in the market for some long form reading material while you relax, I recommend you check out an article in The Walrus called, After the Troubles. It’s by Toronto-based planner Joe Berridge – who is a partner at Urban Strategies – and it’s the story behind his team’s Belfast City Centre Regeneration Strategy and Investment Plan.

    It’s a fascinating and entertaining read, and there are lots of comparisons between Toronto and Belfast. Here’s a little taste:

    “IT WOULD BE HARD to conceive of two cities more different than Belfast and Toronto. One old world, one new; one grand, one utilitarian; one barely ticking over, one growing like topsy. And of course, one tribal, the other the epitome of post-tribe. Belfast is 96 percent white—forget about Catholic-Protestant, that’s the critical urban statistic. And yet it’s important to remember that Toronto itself was once the largest Orange town in the world. (Wikipedia asserts that every mayor of Toronto since its founding was an Orangeman until Nathan Philips, a wonderful Jewish mayor, was elected in 1954.) Even the current mayor, John Tory, draws his name from a bunch of brigands and royalist cattle thieves in the Irish backcountry.”

    I spent a bit of time in Belfast when I was working in Dublin (2007) and so it was particularly interesting for me to read about his assessment of the city. Like Berridge, I found the city eerily empty during off-peak times. But it’s an architecturally rich city and a fascinating city for urbanists because of all that has happened.

    Though now we are talking about “after the troubles.” Things are progressing. And that strikes me as a positive thought while I make my pancakes on Christmas morning.

  • Merry Christmas everyone

    image

    Today is Christmas Day. I hope that you are all having a wonderful day and spending it with family and friends. That is exactly what I’m doing here in Toronto.

    It’s certainly nice to have a bit of downtime. I’ve been playing around with my new GoPro (see above photo), which had been sitting unopened on my shelf for the past few weeks.

    The photo above was taken at the Pier 27 condos. It’s still very much a construction zone. The area at grade in the photo will be a linear public park that connects the main street to the waterfront. I’m looking forward to seeing it come together.

    Have a great day everyone 🙂