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: development

  • Toronto’s grand bargain gave us nodes instead of neighbourhoods

    Stephen Velasco maintains a wonderful set of models for Toronto showing existing, under-construction, and proposed/approved developments. Here’s his website and here’s an aerial he recently shared showing a large section of the city overlaid with subway and LRT stations.

    What is abundantly clear from this visualization is the “grand bargain” that has guided development in Toronto for over two decades: we won’t touch most of the low-rise residential land in the city, and instead we will create high-rise pockets next to transit.

    This was the path of least political resistance, and while building on top of and next to transit is obviously sound, the extreme density cliff we encouraged created several urban economic and city-building distortions.

    Land became artificially scarce, even though there’s lots of room within the boundaries of Toronto. And high density became our only option, eliminating many other housing typologies for Torontonians. But perhaps most importantly, it created an urban fabric of dense nodes that in many cases aren’t actually urban.

    What this means is that most of the city remains unwalkable, without urban amenities, and clogged with car traffic. The way to better use our existing transit infrastructure, create more amenity-rich communities, and reduce Toronto’s dependency on the car is to flank these isolated tower clusters with more evenly distributed density.

    Towers on top of stations are, of course, good, but there then needs to be a gradient of 4-12 storey buildings across the surrounding avenues, major streets, and interior residential streets.

    The good news is that we’re moving in this direction. It’s just going to take time for us to firmly strike a new grand bargain. But in my view, this city-building approach is going to guide the next two decades of development in Toronto.

    Aerial visualization by Stephen Velasco

  • The penthouse loggias of One Delisle

    In the Penthouse Collection at One Delisle, which spans the top three floors of the building, the homes all have a fully covered loggia as one of their outdoor spaces. I say “one of” because these suites all have multiple outdoor spaces. If you’re buying a penthouse, I would imagine you want to own several different pieces of the sky.

    Here’s a plan (this particular suite also has curved walls because it’s, you know, sexier):

    I was on site this morning as the team was installing the curtain wall and panels for the southwest-facing loggia on the very top floor, and let me tell you that it is wildly impressive in person.

    The idea behind these loggias was to create outdoor rooms, protected from the elements both above and on the sides so that they could be used for as long as possible throughout the year. We also provided the option of a hot tub for year-round use, which some purchasers did opt for.

    The space was certainly showing off today on what was a beautiful fall day.

  • Why new homes will not kill the vibe in Bloor West Village

    I learned about this development proposal over the weekend through a Toronto Star article that I couldn’t read because it was behind a paywall. Oh well, here’s the Twitter post and the headline: “Once built, the 60-unit tower will be the only one on the strip. Locals say it will kill the area’s vibe.”

    The original proposal was a 16-storey mixed-use building at 2273-2279 Bloor Street West in Bloor West Village, but through negotiations with the City, it was reduced to 14 residential floors plus a mechanical penthouse wrapped with indoor and outdoor amenity spaces. The height is just under 50 metres, and the resulting FSI for the site is 9.2. What you see above is the revised massing (via UrbanToronto).

    So, will it kill the area’s vibe?

    One way to look at the proposal is that it’ll be the “only one.” But the other way to look at it is that we’ve historically underbuilt along one of our major subway lines and that it’s a positive indicator that we’re now seeing proposals like this being brought forward. This is good. It’s a fine-grained urban proposal with 50% two- and three-bedroom suites and zero parking.

    The question we should be asking ourselves is: how do we encourage more of this? The future of Toronto lies not in the two- to three-storey buildings you see depicted above, but in a mix of denser buildings that will unlock additional homes in the city and allow Toronto to wean itself off its dependency on the car. People are what create the vibe.

  • The context behind the viral Edmonton multiplex site

    I’ve had a few people respond to my recent post about the multiplex battle underway in Edmonton, and so I now have a bit more information. The address of the house in the photo is 10014 147 Street NW. Here’s a post-construction photo from the street:

    Here’s a street view image showing the two flanking multiplexes under construction:

    Here’s how close the house is to the LRT station currently under construction at Stony Plain Road & 149 Street (this is the Valley Line West extension):

    Here’s the route map:

    And finally, here’s the station’s location in relation to downtown:

    Customarily, this is exactly what you want to do on top of and around new transit investments. You want to build density. Transit investment and land-use policy, as I like to harp on here, are integral to one another. And if you do everything correctly, you won’t have to worry about parking minimums.

    Happy Thanksgiving weekend, everyone.

  • How cities change their minds

    Toronto, like all great cities, is in constant change and transition. I did a search through my blog archive this morning (okay, AI did) and I found it telling to see the things I was writing about and advocating for in the early days, some 10 years ago.

    We used to talk about eradicating parking minimums, and it was a novelty whenever a new project was built with zero spaces. But now we don’t talk about that. Parking requirements? What are those? We let the market determine how much might be needed, if any at all.

    We also used to talk a lot about laneway housing — a lot. For decades, daring architects and urbanists were navigating labyrinthian land-use approvals to build the odd one for themselves. Oftentimes they were only permitted if a pre-existing coach house was already on the site. But as a rule, laneway houses were bad and not permitted.

    Critics were concerned that they would erode the fabric of our low-rise communities and overrun them with renters. I remember people telling me this to my face at committee meetings, and reading comments from folks who believed that laneways were unsavoury places, and so surely only questionable people would want to live in one.

    Fast forward to today, and laneway and garden suites are standard practice across Toronto. They are no longer novel. They’re just part of the housing supply that Toronto now builds. In fact, in many new housing projects, they are the most desirable suite on the property.

    Shifting scales, I also remember the challenges that the team initially faced in getting One Delisle approved at the intersection of Yonge & St. Clair. At 155m, it was the tallest development approval at the time, and it’s currently the tallest constructed building in the submarket.

    One of the criticisms was that it was not in keeping with the scale of the office buildings constructed at and around the intersection between the 1960s and the early 1980s. But is that where the line should be drawn? Let’s not forget that before its post-war development boom, Yonge & St. Clair was a predominantly low-rise area. Surely this jump in scale provoked similar concerns.

    The planning deal that was struck over the last development cycle was that low-rise neighbourhoods would go largely untouched and that density would be concentrated around transit stations and in specific nodes. These nodes were the housing supply outlets. The inverse would have been to redevelop our low-rise neighbourhoods.

    Today, the only comments I hear about One Delisle’s height are that it’s not tall enough given its beautiful architecture. Opinions clearly evolve, and sometimes the things we’re unsure about aren’t so bad after all. In fact, sometimes they can become a defining characteristic of a place.

  • A stack of single-family houses on Avenue Road

    I stumbled upon this proposal for 996-998 Avenue Road after Chris Spoke stumbled upon it. It immediately stood out to me because it’s a site we looked at when it was for sale, and because it’s a handsome-looking proposal designed by Richard Wengle.

    The minor variance application is for a new eight-storey building with 6 residential units, 1 surface visitor parking space, 6 long-term bicycle spaces, and 12 parking spaces in two underground levels (accessed via a parking elevator). This description alone should tell you the target audience, but here’s the typical floor plan:

    The fact that this 2,790-square-foot plan only has two bedrooms tells you that this is geared toward wealthy empty-nesters (although the family room could very easily be converted to a third bedroom). So the project is effectively a stack of single-family houses, each with two parking spaces.

    This is a segment of the Toronto condominium market that has proven to be the most resilient in the current environment, but who knows how deep that demand goes. Whatever the case, it does feel appropriate for this submarket.

    I’m not suggesting that this kind of unit mix should be aspired to everywhere, but this overall scale of housing is something we should be replicating all across Toronto’s major streets and avenues.

    That we’re starting to see more of it feels like a maturation of the Toronto market, or perhaps it’s just a sign that larger projects are significantly harder to underwrite today.

  • The final release at One Delisle

    We’ve just launched a new One Delisle Instagram account (@one_delisle) and, as part of it, a new video series. Here’s our most recent video, featuring Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang. We also filmed a new video this week that I think is going to be spectacular. Hint: It involves a drone, house music, and a beautiful summer-in-September sunset. So if you aren’t yet following One Delisle, you may want to do that now.

    This week, we also introduced The Reserve Residences, which is our final release for the project. This is a collection of only ten homes on the highest floors of the building. All of these suites feature generous 2–3 bedroom floor plans of up to 3,600 square feet. This is the final opportunity to own before occupancies begin in spring 2027. For more info or to book a site tour, email sales@onedelisle.com.

  • New acquisition for Globizen Flats: 571 Oakwood Avenue in Toronto

    This week, Globizen announced a new acquisition for our Flats division: 571 Oakwood Avenue in Toronto.

    This is an exciting moment for us because it marks the first project in our strategy of unlocking underutilized urban sites to create thoughtfully crafted, design-forward rental homes in walkable, transit-oriented communities across Toronto.

    The mission is simple:

    • Fill a Housing Need: We believe there’s a gap in the market for spacious, well-designed, family-oriented rental homes at accessible price points.
    • Support Toronto’s Urban Evolution: We believe that Toronto is at a unique turning point in its urban history, transitioning from a monocentric downtown surrounded by low-rise suburbs to a polycentric city that fundamentally rethinks its relationship to the car.
    • Invest in Renewable Energy: Canada needs more clean energy capacity. We see this as an opportunity to create a decentralized renewable energy asset alongside our communities.

    Globizen Flats is a response to these beliefs.

    Check out the full post in the Globizen Journal. You can also subscribe and follow Globizen Flats (@globizenflats) on Instagram.

    As an aside, I initially created the above toilet image as a joke. It’s a photo of the bathroom in the existing house on site. But my partners thought it was cool and that we should share it publicly, so here we are. I bet that toilet was the neatest thing when it was first installed.

  • One of Canada’s wealthiest families unveils bold vision for St. Clair Square

    This week, Wittington Properties (which is owned by Canada’s Weston family) unveiled a bold vision for Yonge and St. Clair in midtown Toronto, which they are now calling St. Clair Square. Alex Bozikovic wrote about it, here, in the Globe and Mail.

    Here are some of the key things to know:

    • 1.6 million square feet of new construction alongside the existing shopping complex and two office towers.
    • Kohn Pedersen Fox is leading urban design and architecture for two of the three towers (37 and 46 storeys tall), as well as a private amenity building called the Ravine Club.
    • Herzog and de Meuron are the architects for the third tall building, which will be 24 storeys and house only 72 large condominium residences (you all can do the rough math on the average suite size).
    • A flagship, mass-timber cultural building (bottom right in the above AI rendering) designed by Canadian design firms Omar Gandhi and Bruce Mau Design. This building will replace Delisle Court (on the west side of Yonge, north of One Delisle) and is expected to house a 300-seat performance hall, a cafe, and potentially a new Toronto Public Library.
    • A large car-free public square (in the shape of an “L”) designed by PUBLIC WORK will “define the area” and is expected to be lined with small shops and restaurants no larger than 1,000 square feet each (fine-grained).
    • Construction is expected to begin in 2027 — on the entire complex.

    Herzog and de Meuron is one of my favourite architecture firms, and we have spoken to them over the years about potential projects in Toronto. They have yet to build a project in Canada. Though nothing ever came to fruition, I’m excited that they’re working at Yonge & St. Clair alongside such an incredible design team.

    In my humble opinion, our project One Delisle is one of Toronto’s next architectural landmarks (the building on the right in the above rendering). St. Clair Square promises to add to this rich context and layer on some cultural cachet with its flagship building. We should all be excited about the future of Yonge & St. Clair.

    Congratulations to the team!

  • Cynics sound smart but optimists build the future

    There’s an old saying that “cynics sound smart, but optimists move the world.” And indeed, studies show that we typically perceive pessimism as a sign of intelligence. On some levels, this makes sense because it requires intellect to understand something, and then expose its vulnerabilities.

    But at the same time, pure cynicism can be inherently passive. It’s an easy armour to wear, one that protects the user from (1) taking risk, (2) being proven wrong, and (3) doing the hard work to determine whether something might actually work. Importantly, cynicism generally creates zero new value. It may protect you from a bad decision, but it also blocks you from the really great ones. Value creation demands action.

    Now, blind optimism is not the answer. Risk management is essential. In fact, some of my real estate developer colleagues describe the business purely in these terms: “I manage risk for a living.”

    The right answer is a kind of rational optimism. Because the greatest value creation comes when you believe something is true or possible, even if it has never been done before. If someone has already proven the thesis, it doesn’t require the same degree of optimism; it only requires research.

    If you’re looking for evidence of this in practice, consider that the most entrepreneurial cities in the world have robust capital markets that are inherently tolerant of risk. Venture capital, for example, is rational optimism scaled across an asset class. It operates on a power-law distribution. The assumption is that most investments will be a failure, but a select few will more than make up for it.

    This is an important feature because it rewards bold ideas that can change the world. But for all of this to work, you need a healthy dose of institutional optimism. Without it, these bets go unmade and the future gets created by someone else. Let’s not ignore this key ingredient as we build our cities.