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: city building

  • Introducing 100 Lombard

    Earlier this week, Slate Asset Management and Forum Asset Management submitted a new development proposal for 100 Lombard Street in downtown Toronto.

    At the time of writing this post, the applications (zoning by-law amendment and site plan control) hadn’t yet hit the city’s website. So here’s some information about the project, including its big moves:

    • This is the first mixed-use residential project in Toronto designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The proposal includes residential, office, and retail spaces.
    • Architecture by OMA and WZMH Architects. Heritage by ERA Architects. Landscape and public realm by Claude Cormier + Associés. Planning by Urban Strategies. Structure by Stephenson Engineering.
    • The principal architectural idea is to create a vertical urban village through a series of “urban rooms” interspersed throughout the tower. These spaces would serve as amenities for the building and house a variety of different functions. See above rendering.
    • The proposal introduces three important public realm moves: (1) a new public plaza that pays homage to the site’s former neighbor to the east — Second City; (2) a new mid-block pedestrian connection running north-south from Richmond Street East to Lombard Street; and (3) an outdoor public art gallery featuring oversized art tableaus.
    • The site currently houses one designated heritage building (86 Lombard Street), and the design contemplates relocating and fully retaining this building on the eastern edge of the site. Once you see the drawings, you’ll fully understand why this was the most logical move.

    The entire project team is very excited to get this proposal out and into the world. And we hope that you will see it as being representative of our ongoing and lasting commitment to elevating architecture, sustainability, culture, and city building in Toronto.

  • Practicing what I preach

    In yesterday’s post I wrote about happiness vs. satisfaction (among a bunch of other things). And I mentioned that I derive deep satisfaction from the work that I do, which is real estate development. On the back of this post, I received a question from a reader this morning that more or less asked me if I think about the impact of my work on other people’s happiness / satisfaction. Part of the point that was being made was that while it may be a positive endeavor for me, I may be completely destroying the satisfaction, happiness, and lives of others. Do I give this any thought? Lastly, a point was made that very few developers seem to live in their own housing projects, which should tell you something.

    I thought these were all very good points/questions and so I’d like to respond to them publicly:

    • I do think carefully about the happiness and satisfaction of others. In fact, part of the reason this work is satisfying is that, in my opinion, it is both challenging and important work. Growing cities require new housing and the reality is that almost all of this housing comes from private developers.
    • This may sound cheesy, but I also care deeply about beauty. This is something that is of course in the eye of the beholder. But I do want things to be beautiful. I want our cities to be more beautiful. And I don’t think we talk about this enough. I mean, just look at the garbage bins we have in Toronto.
    • Some people may not like or appreciate the form that development usually takes in cities such as Toronto, but the housing needs to go somewhere. As a result of restricting development in most areas of the city, we are now forced to highly concentrate development in relatively few areas. Many are reacting to this.
    • There will almost certainly be tensions between incumbents and new entrants when it comes to city building. That’s part of what makes this work so challenging and rewarding. Everyone involved in the building of our cities has to constantly problem solve and manage competing interests. It’s not easy.
    • I am in fact moving into one of our projects (Junction House). I am doing this because (1) I think our team is creating an awesome and beautiful project and (2) I believe that living in multi-family buildings in walkable neighborhoods is a more sustainable (and enjoyable) way to live. I want to practice what I preach.

  • We’re hiring, again

    The development team at Slate is hiring once again for our Toronto office. We are looking for a coordinator/analyst to join the team and work on all aspects of our projects (which span the full lifecycle of development and are pretty cool if you ask me). If you’ve read some of my past hiring posts (examples here and here), there isn’t a lot more that I can say about our company, our culture, and our approach to development.

    But what I would emphasize is that our culture is paramount. I am biased, but I think we have a great team that works well together and that cares deeply about what we do. All of this is important, which is why in the past I have encouraged candidates to go beyond their resume and share something else like their online presence or a link to something that would help us get to know them a little better.

    If you would like to learn more about the position and/or apply, please do that over here on LinkedIn. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter.

  • What is the FSI of Paris?

    In the world of development, there is something known as a floor space index (FSI). Some places call it a floor area ratio (FAR), but they mean the same thing. It is one measure of density. To calculate it, you simply divide the total building area by the site area. For example, if you had a 25,000 square foot piece of land and you were to build a single storey building that occupied every bit of the site (also 25,000 sf), you would have an FSI or FAR of 1.0. If you built a two storey building on only half of the site, you would similarly have an FSI or FAR of 1.0. The area didn’t change, you just moved things around. That’s how FSI’s work.

    A ratio like this tells you how intensely you may be using a piece of land, but it doesn’t tell you everything or necessarily give you the full picture. Which is why I find it silly when too much emphasis is placed on this singular number. I don’t think anyone in the history of the world has ever traveled to a city — let’s take Paris — and remarked how beautiful it is because of its floor space indices. Nobody thinks like this. It’s way too esoteric. What guides our experiences is built form, the ground plane, relationships to streets, materiality, light, context, and many other important things.

    To give a specific example, let’s take One Delisle. This project was in effect approved twice. After it was approved by City Council in July 2020 an adjacent land parcel was acquired. It wasn’t absolutely necessary to do this, but we felt it made for better city building and so we did it. (We wanted to look back knowing we did the right thing.) That meant that we needed to go back to Council to revise our approvals, which ended up happening at the beginning of this year (public staff report, here). There was no change to the tower and and no change to any of the key setbacks or stepbacks. But the overall FSI did go down!

    Will anyone notice or care about this lower ratio? I doubt it. Which is why I think it’s silly to try and plan our cities around them. It feels like design by spreadsheet. Thankfully, I think many people recognize this.

    Photo by Thibault Penin on Unsplash

  • One cool thing each year

    Last month I wrote a post introducing the One Delisle video series. Well, in case you missed it, the next two episodes in the series are now out, which you can watch over here. My personal favorite (so far) is episode two. It’s about city building at Yonge & St. Clair and a goal that Slate set for itself to do “one cool thing each year.” That thing has ranged from murals to streetscape improvements, and has included work from artists such as birdO (aka Jerry Rugg). If you aren’t familiar with his work, have a look over here.

  • Two perplexing development narratives

    There are many development narratives that I don’t quite understand. (I’m thinking of Toronto, but you can probably replace Toronto with any number of global cities for this discussion.) One is the belief that our transit network is full and so no new development should be allowed in certain locations, next to certain transit stations. The thrust of this argument is that additional transit capacity must be added before any new development is allowed to occur. This might sound logical, except it ignores the fact that the need for new housing doesn’t magically disappear because subway cars are thought to be too busy during the morning rush.

    Transit systems are also a network, and so does this mean that no more development should be allowed to happen anywhere in the city/region? Or is the goal to simply move development off of higher order transit and into lower-density areas so that the future residents in these new buildings can either take buses to the transit stations that were previously deemed to be at capacity or drive their cars everywhere? (Our highways have excess capacity during the morning rush, right?)

    The second narrative that I find perplexing is that new developments don’t give back in any way. Above is a chart showing residential development charges in the City of Toronto, as of November 1, 2020. This chart outlines the fees that every developer must pay when building new residential, though it is important to keep in mind that there are many other government fees and charges that form part of almost every new development. These are things like parkland dedication and separately negotiated community benefits. But for the purposes of this post, let’s just focus on development charges (aka impact fees).

    Assume you’re building a 400 unit apartment building, consisting of 240 one bedroom suites (60%) and 160 two and three bedroom suites (40%). Based on the above chart, your development charge bill would be:

    240 one bedroom suites x $33,358 per unit = $8,005,920

    160 two and three bedroom suites x $51,103 per unit = $8,176,480

    For a total of $16,182,400.

    But it’s important to keep in mind that these are the rates as of November 1, 2020. They will almost certainly go up by the time these charges become payable for your 400 unit apartment building. By how much you ask? Well according to Urban Capital’s most recent issue of Site Magazine, which compared a development pro forma from 2005 to 2020, development charges in the City of Toronto have increased by about 3,244% during this time period. (The S&P 500 was up about 220% during this same time.) These are obligatory fees that contribute to everything from transit and parks to subsidized housing and municipal services. (The line items above.)

    So it strikes me that there are other more productive questions that we could and should be asking ourselves. Such as, why is it that our transit/mobility infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with new development and new housing demand? What are we going to do to fix that immediately? Why are we not taxing the things we don’t want (like traffic congestion) so that we have more resources for the things we do want (like transit and housing)? And most importantly, what is the best way for all of us to work together so that we can create the absolute greatest global city in the world?

    Photo by Mimi Di Cianni on Unsplash

  • We are hiring for the Development team

    Slate Asset Management is hiring.

    We are looking to hire an Associate or Director to join the Development team here in our Toronto office. The full set of responsibilities can be found over here on LinkedIn, but at a high level, we are looking for someone who wants to join an entrepreneurial team and lead — fairly independently — a portfolio of urban infill projects.

    Our approach to development really stems from the broader Slate platform. We are bold and thematic investors who work to create long-term value for our investors and partners. From a development perspective, that translates into an unwavering commitment to design & culture, innovation, and disciplined project execution.

    We pride ourselves on working alongside the world’s best architects and designers, and uncovering opportunities that others may be overlooking. We are proactive and hands-on in everything that we do. We also feel an inherent sense of responsibility for the buildings that we create and we want the work that we do to help improve our cities. We stand behind our product.

    If this sounds like a mission that you can get behind, then I would encourage you to learn more about us at slateam.com and submit an application via LinkedIn. Please note that we are also asking candidates to introduce themselves through a short video.

  • The art of the possible

    Architect Sheena Sharp, of Coolearth Architecture, tweeted something interesting out today:

    Improving this would be good. And it is the same gripe that I had with architecture school when I was there. Why is it taboo to talk about money and the market? Why must design exist, in many instances, within a vacuum?

    I can appreciate the value in not always constraining yourself with the status quo. To innovate, you have to stretch. And sometimes, or perhaps oftentimes, the best ideas initially seem dumb. It’s important to have room to experiment and tinker.

    But eventually, reality does matter. Plans that look good on paper, may not be suitable for the market. Constraints are a big part of what makes the city building industry so rewarding. Planning is hard. Building is hard. Getting consensus is hard. It’s all incredibly difficult and you have to be creative.

    The really elegant solutions usually need to weave across and through many different objectives and stakeholders. And so in my view, the more you can empathize with those other constraints, the more elegant your solution will be. Knowing more is good.

  • La ville du quart d’heure, but also the value of centralization

    These days, everybody seems to be talking about the 15-minute city — Bloomberg, Treehugger, the Financial Times, as well as countless others. While not a new concept, it is a moniker that is easier for most people to digest. COVID-19 has also created the right backdrop for the moment that it is currently enjoying.

    The 15-minute city is a polycentric and somewhat decentralized approach to urbanism. It is about encouraging and creating multiple centers of urban activity near where people live. The idea being that everybody should have most of their essential services within a 15-minute walk of their home. Put even more simply, it’s about creating an urban environment where people can live locally.

    The benefits to this are numerous. It encourages more compact forms of development, which in turn encourages people to rely more heavily on active modes of transportation such as walking and cycling. The result is less commuting, less carbon emissions, more time, and likely better health outcomes given the reliance on active mobility.

    Indeed, living in a walkable urban community is something that I personally put a huge value on. If I can’t walk out of my home to go grab a coffee and something to eat, it’s probably not the neighborhood for me. But at the same time, I don’t think we can ignore the fact that there are powerful centralizing forces present within our cities.

    As Natalie Whittle points out in this FT article from the summer, new technologies — from the telegraph to the internet — have always elicited predictions that humans would now flee cities and move to the countryside. While it is true that there are other technologies — everything from the streetcar to the automobile — that have allowed us to decentralize to a greater extent, most of us are all still bound to cities.

    In fact, you could argue that the opposite of decentralization has played out. As we have transitioned to a knowledge and information economy, the returns to being embedded within cities and within a particular place have only become greater.

    Take for example the phenomenon of “collab houses” that has been playing out in Los Angeles for some time now, including during this pandemic. Collab houses are typically LA mansions where clusters of young people come and live together in order to create content for platforms like YouTube and TikTok. It’s like a big dorm for creators. And supposedly the biggest one is Hype House.

    What’s fascinating to me about this phenomenon is that it reinforces two things. One, if you want to be rich and famous (emphasis on famous), Los Angeles is seemingly still an important place to be. And two, if you really want to be at the top of your game, it’s apparently not enough to be in the same city as other likeminded individuals; you also need to be under the same roof, bouncing ideas around and pushing one another.

    So what does this all mean? Well, maybe this time is different and we are all currently living through a reorganization of how we will live, work and play. Or, maybe this time isn’t all that different. And the 15-minute city, while an important goal, won’t be the be-all and end-all of modern city building.

    Photo by Lukas Geck on Unsplash

  • It’s time to build

    Marc Andreessen’s recent essay, called “It’s time to build,” is destined to ruffle feathers. In it, he not only sings the virtues of building in its broadest sense — everything from healthcare and housing to education and manufacturing — but he calls out the western world for smug complacency with the status quo. We are no longer choosing to build. And a good example of that is how we have been managing (and mismanaging) this current pandemic.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    In fact, I think building is how we reboot the American dream. The things we build in huge quantities, like computers and TVs, drop rapidly in price. The things we don’t, like housing, schools, and hospitals, skyrocket in price. What’s the American dream? The opportunity to have a home of your own, and a family you can provide for. We need to break the rapidly escalating price curves for housing, education, and healthcare, to make sure that every American can realize the dream, and the only way to do that is to build.

    Marc has also included a suggested reading list if you click through on the above tweet. By the time you do that, I am sure there will also be a lot of discussion around his essay.