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: downtown hamilton

  • Corktown Condos just launched!

    Today was the official launch of Corktown Condos. (In case you missed it, I wrote about Corktown last month, over here.) So what does this actually mean? What it means is that we got a small group of 500+ agents and brokers together to tell them about the project. We talked about our love of Hamilton and provided an overview of the project’s amenities, suite pricing, deposit structures, and so on. Everyone who attended now also has access to our broker portal, where all of this information is stored.

    However, no actual purchase agreements were signed today. That’s for later. The first signing event will take place on Saturday, May 27th starting at 12PM, at 30 St. Clair Avenue West, Suite 103, in Toronto. So if you’re interested in Corktown, I would encourage you to attend on this date. Feel free to also reach out to our sales team if you have any questions (sales@corktown.condos). The people you want to connect with are Shannon Glas, Daniella Commisso, and/or Hansen Chu. Hopefully I’ll see you there next weekend!

  • Introducing CORKTOWN

    Today, Slate Asset Management announced its latest condominium project: Corktown. Named after its neighborhood, Corktown is located in downtown Hamilton just south of the GO Centre station.

    If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you might remember that I first wrote about this site a few years ago when we were just starting community engagement.

    Since then, the design has evolved to include a tower on the southeast corner of the block (pictured above) and a mid-rise building along John Street South. This site is also now fully zoned.

    So it’s go time. Phase one, called Corktown East, will launch this summer and condo pre-registration is live as of today. To register, head over here.

  • We’re hosting a pre-design community meeting in Hamilton

    This fall Slate acquired a retail center in Hamilton called Corktown Plaza. It is the block bounded by John Street South, Young Street, Catharine Street South, and Forest Avenue. It is just south of the Hamilton GO Centre in downtown.

    It is currently a much used single storey retail plaza with a large surface parking lot facing John Street South. It’s still early days, but the long-term plan is to redevelop it into a mixed-use retail and residential complex.

    Before putting pen to paper, the team is hosting a “pre-design community meeting” this Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7pm at the Church of Ascension down the street. Address is 64 Forest Avenue (accessible entrance at 258 John Street South).

    Here is the invite (embedded tweet):

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    The purpose of the meeting is to gather feedback from the community before beginning design. We want to know what’s working today, what’s not working today, and what would be ideal for the future. 

    CORE Architects and GSP Group (planning) will be in attendance along with the Slate team. The format will be brief presentations followed by interactive breakout sessions. There will be trace paper on hand so that we can all put pen to paper.

    If you live and/or work in the area or are simply interested in the future of Hamilton, please feel free to join us on Tuesday evening. If you can, send a quick email to rsvp@kga-inc.com letting us know you’ll be coming. But just showing up is also perfectly fine.

  • Adaptive reuse in Hamilton

    Yesterday evening I was in Hamilton, Ontario for an adaptive reuse building tour that was put on for the 2016 OPPI Symposium (Ontario Provincial Planners Institute). 

    Hamilton has lots of these sorts of projects underway. The city has a rich history and, because it never saw the development pressures that cities like Toronto saw from the 70s to 90s, many of these buildings now remain ready to be reused. That’s my theory at least.

    I was told that last year downtown Hamilton delivered about 600 residential units. This may not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that the number was zero for a very long time. In fact, just seeing a crane up in the air is exciting for those who lived through that period of inactivity. I can’t fully relate to that.

    But it’s not just development that is going on. It’s city building. 

    The city is creating new cultural spaces and developers such as Core Urban have carved out niches working on boutique-scaled “pain in the ass” heritage projects. How’s this for commitment: Core Urban has been awarded heritage builder of the year 3 times, but they have yet to work on a designated heritage property.

    I’ve said before that I think there’s a new breed of developer emerging in cities today. Hamilton is no exception. And that’s very exciting for this region.

    If you’re interested in Hamilton, check out the blog Rebuild Hamilton. It’s written by Thomas Allen who I think of as Mr. Hamilton. It’s a phenomenal resource for architecture and city enthusiasts.

    The photo at the top of this post was taken by me within the proposed Beasley Park Lofts by Stinson Developments.