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.
It has been cold and snowy in Toronto lately, which is great if you’re looking to shred pow on a snowboard, but suboptimal if you’re trying to construct buildings. It pains me deep inside my bone marrow when we lose productive days to weather. But what can you do?
I was, however, thrilled to see this first glimpse (pictured above) of the lobby / co-working space at Junction House this morning. The slightly elevated section (which is the point of view of the above rendering) is the co-working area.
The reason it’s elevated is that we needed the clearance below for our parking ramp. We thought about trying to make it retail, but a place for residents to hang out and work seemed like a pretty good idea.
A lot of us on the team are big fans of a great hotel lobby bar, but that’s kind of challenging to do in a residential condominium. This is maybe the next best thing. It’s been very popular with purchasers so far, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs in real life.
We have been working with Vanderbrand for many years. They are the creative agency behind both Junction House and One Delisle. We love the work that they do. It’s beautiful, and they have always managed to get our vision behind each project.
In the case of Junction House, we wanted something clean and simple that at the same time responded to the creative edginess of the Junction neighborhood.
And in the case of One Delisle, we wanted something elevated but that wasn’t traditional or typical. One Delisle is all about pioneering architecture and the brand needed to reflect that (we ended up creating our own typeface that will be carried through into the completed building).
If you’re interested in learning more, Vanderbrand has just updated their website to include a full “case study” on One Delisle. You can check that out over here. Below are a few of my favorite images.
I love mid-rise buildings. I think they are an incredibly livable scale of housing, which is why I am looking forward to moving into Junction House when we begin occupancies next year. But as we have talked about many times before on the blog, the mid-rise economics are challenging in this city, which is why we also don’t have any other Avenue-style mid-rise projects in the pipeline right now. We haven’t been able to find land where the math works.
For well over two decades, Toronto’s official plan has called for transit-oriented intensification along the “Avenues,” much of it expected in the form of mid-rise apartments that can be approved “as of right” – meaning without zoning or official plan appeals. Such buildings are often seen as more livable and human scale than 50- or 60-storey towers.
Yet, ironically, the highly prescriptive Mid-Rise Guidelines – combined with skyrocketing land, labour and building costs, as well as timelines that can run to six years for a mid-sized building – have turned these projects into pyramid-shaped unicorns, often filled with deep, dark and narrow units dubbed “bowling alleys.”
“The economics are so frail,” says architect Dermot Sweeny, founding principal of Sweeny & Co., who describes the angular plane requirements as “a massive cost” because they make the structure more complicated and expensive while reducing the amount of leasable or saleable floor space.
The critiques extend beyond the industry. Professor of architecture Richard Sommer, former dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Landscape, Architecture and Design at the University of Toronto, describes the controls in the guidelines as “very crude.” “They’re built around a mindset of deference to low-rise communities.”
My opinion is that, at a minimum, we need to revisit the “guidelines” that govern these kinds of projects and we need to make this scale of development “as-of-right.” In the same way that laneway suites work, where you simply apply for a building permit, we need to make it just as easy for mid-rise housing. There just too many barriers and too many opportunities for something to come up that could hold up the entire project for months or years.
Building at a variety of scales is important for the fabric and vitality of our cities. Unfortunately, I have all but made up my mind that small doesn’t work unless it’s as-of-right. I would love to build another laneway house and I fully expect that to happen at some point in the near future. But I just can’t seem to get my head around another mid-rise building right now. I wish that wasn’t the case. And it’s certainly not because of a lack of effort.
This morning I attended ULI Toronto’s annual “Meet the Chief Planners” event. (Some of my random tweets from the morning can be found here.) Now in its 7th year, it is a great event where all of the chief city planners from around the Greater Golden Horseshoe area come together with professionals from the land use community to network and discuss the future of our cities.
Normally it happens in the evening over dinner and drinks, which is how I attended last year right before our first lockdown (we were at the elbow bump and foot tap stage of the pandemic). But this year it was of course online.
First, I would like to say thank you to Multiplex Construction Canada (our partner on Junction House) for the invite. And secondly, I would like to say kudos to Richard Joy and the rest of ULI Toronto for coordinating such a great event with over 400 virtual attendees.
However, the main point that I would like to make today is that I don’t know how anyone can attend a virtual conference and believe that this is some sort of “new norm.” I don’t know about all of you, but I am ready to go back to rubber chicken dinners and too many glasses of affordably priced wine — pronto.
I say this not to criticize any of the groups that are working hard today to organize virtual events. I am a big fan of ULI and the work that they do. I would encourage all of you involved in the built environment to join immediately if you’re not already members.
Instead, I say this as yet another piece of evidence for why I won’t stop writing and talking about the resilience of our cities. Video calls are such an awful substitute for sitting around a table with people and breaking bread. It’s not even close.
And so as I sat at my home office desk this morning, listening to the conference and eating McDonald’s hotcakes (because, hey, Uber Eats and because, hey, it’s Friday), I couldn’t help but be reminded of how bullish I am on cities and city life. This, I thought to myself, is why cities are such a centralizing force.
Ultimately, it is also why groups like the Urban Land Institute are so important. It is because our cities matter a great deal and because they’re not going anywhere. If you aren’t sick of me talking about the resilience of cities, you can also find me in this recent RENX article called, “Toronto residential tower boom shows no signs of slowing.”
Today was an important milestone for Junction House: The construction crane was erected! The crew started early in the morning and we ended up having a perfect bluebird day (I don’t know where this expression comes from but it’s used all the time by skiers and snowboarders).
It’s been a tough winter for most of us. And so in my view, it is particularly important to celebrate these kinds of milestones and achievements. Thankfully, there seems to be a general optimism in the air these days. I think it’s going to be a great summer.
Now that the crane has been installed, it’s time to start building up.
This is an interesting article by Ben Schott of Bloomberg talking about how “debranding is the new branding.” In it he argues that for reasons of fashion, tech, and other factors, many or perhaps most brands seem to be shedding detail and depth in their brands/logos and moving toward simplicity and flatness. He calls this debranding (which doesn’t quite feel like the right word to me.)
Countless examples are provided ranging from Burger King and KFC to Saint Laurent Paris and Diane Von Furstenberg. In all cases, their logos and lockups went from elaborate to minimal. And in some cases, names were deliberately shortened. Kentucky Friend Chicken, as you all know, became KFC, largely because “fried” was becoming an undesirable reference.
The same is also true for newer brands that have no history of elaborate logos. As I was reading through the article, I started thinking about some of the project brands that we have created over the years. Here is our logo for Junction House (crafted by Vanderbrand):
Some of this is certainly about fashion. At this point, overly detailed logos feel a bit cartoonish and antiquated. Clean and minimal is pretty much what you want today. Slate’s logo went through a similar transformation over the years and is now, as many of you know, a black box with white text.
Another part of this is that logos and brands now need to live in so many different locations from favicons and mobile apps to business cards and social media profile photos. Sometimes you just don’t have enough real estate to show a lot of detail.
Simplicity can also signal strength. Starbucks is perhaps a good example of this. Initially their logo spelled out Starbucks Coffee. But now we all associate their green nautical-inspired sea lady with Starbucks Coffee and so those words are no longer necessary. This kind of brand equity, of course, takes time to build.
Fashion label Off-White is another interesting case study that I wrote about a few years ago, over here. What they have managed to do is take simple and mundane things like quotation marks and really own them as part of their brand. Put any word in quotation marks on a t-shirt and you’ll have me thinking it’s a $315 Off-White tee.
Today I’m excited to announce the latest artist collaboration at Junction House. (For a background on the others, click here.) Bogota-born, Toronto-based Juanita Lee-Garcia has created a series of hand-cut collage panels for the construction hoarding at Junction House (the background color is the project’s signature electric blue color).
In this installation, Lee-Garcia uses repetition and image repurposing to investigate the limits and the potential of decor in consumer culture. Her work uses simple gestures such as slicing, inserting, folding, and layering to build these new and abstract forms. They are intended to feel both fresh and unfamiliar, as well as comforting — perhaps because of some of their cultural associations.
We love these sorts of collaborations because we want every single one of our development projects to be more than just a new building. We want it to be a catalyst for positive city building change. So the next time you’re in the Junction, I would encourage you to stop by 2720 Dundas Street West and take in Juanita’s work. Limited edition prints of the panels are also available on her website.
My super scientific Twitter balcony survey has revealed that most people seem to like balconies and terraces. Out of the 257 people that voted (not a huge number), 77.4% said that if they were in the market to buy or rent a new place, they would probably want a balcony or terrace. I realize now that my wording could have been more precise. Either way, the results seem to suggest a clear preference.
But there are all sorts of reasons for why you might want to avoid building balconies: energy performance, upfront costs, long-term maintenance, usability at high elevations, overall aesthetics, and so on. In fact, I once had an architect turn down a job because they don’t typically work on residential buildings and, when they do, they refuse to work on ones that have balconies. He told me that they don’t want the liability.
But then what inevitably happens is that the sales and marketing team joins the design meeting and says, “yeah, we hear what you’re saying, but people like outdoor spaces.” And then the great debate starts. Okay, so what percentage of the suites should have an outdoor space? What about a sliding glass well? I think so-and-so is doing it on their project. Yeah, but they’re real expensive and they leak air.
The reality is that there are many buildings without private outdoor spaces and there are many cities where it is common not to build them. Moreover, my Twitter survey doesn’t really tell you exactly how people might behave when they’re about to make a purchasing decision. What you really want are data points and things like A/B tests.
Let’s take for example two typical/identical 600 square foot suites, with the only difference being that one has a balcony and the other doesn’t. Now let’s say that the one with a balcony is selling for $1,400 psf or $840,000 and the one without a balcony is selling for $1,350 psf or $810,000. Will some of the 77.4% that voted balcony/terrace possibly buy the $810,000 suite? Of course. Because it’s less expensive.
So how does one go about making the right decision when it comes to designing for outdoor spaces? Well, in some cases, you won’t have a choice. We have had instances where the City has asked us (okay, forced us) to remove all of the balconies on a particular elevation because they didn’t fit with the urban design aesthetic that they wanted for the streetscape. That always pisses me off.
That aside, my view — and this is just my opinion — is that you can’t generalize when trying to make this decision. You need to carefully consider who your customer is or will be. I’ve written before about the divide between investor demand and end-user demand in residential buildings. It impacts design, and outdoor spaces are no different.
If you take for example Junction House, it is a predominately end-user building. That’s who we thought would be buying and that is who bought. When the team was designing the two-storey House Collection, the intent was to create a kind of substitute for low-rise housing. And so these homes had to have outdoor spaces (they have terraces). This was never a question or a debate.
Similarly, one of the reasons why One Delisle looks the way that it does is because the team set out to create unique terraces, as well as varying outdoor spaces, all throughout the tower. The thinking was, “people like terraces in mid-rise buildings, like Junction House, so let’s figure out how to do that in a high-rise building typology.”
At the same time, we have suites with Juliet balconies at Junction House and it is certainly true that the above recipes may not be suitable for every project. Again, there are lots of buildings without private outdoor spaces, including ones that have sold during this pandemic. One of the things that I have also discovered is that common area outdoor spaces and nearby green spaces can have an impact on whether or not people feel they need private outdoor space.
All of this to say that one size does not fit all. Which is probably why this topic remains such a great debate.
Note: I am making a distinction between balconies and terraces. Balconies typically cantilever out from a building and are not insulated. Terraces, on the other hand, are typically a roof condition in that they sit above a conditioned space. This usually means that the concrete slab will need to get “built up” with insulation and paving. A drainage system will also be required.
Alex Bozikovic is right to praise Gairloch’s upcoming development in the Junction. It’s a beautiful project and it’s exciting to see so many architecturally significant projects in one neighborhood — either completed or to be completed. I’m thinking specifically of DUKE Condos (TAS and Quadrangle), our Junction House project (currently under construction), and now Gairloch’s.
But Alex (as well as Jeremiah Shamess) is also right to point out some of the tensions and contradictions that are inherent to building at this scale. We want European-type mid-rise buildings all along our avenues, but we also want our housing to be more affordable. Problem is, mid-rise buildings are the most expensive way to build.
The approvals process also tends to privilege urban design considerations over things like livability and construction costs. We talk about the shadow impacts that the project might have on the surrounding community, but not about how well the suites will layout when it’s all said and done — not to mention how expensive they will be to build.
The cynics will tell you that it doesn’t matter what it costs to build because developers will always profit maximize (as is the case with every other for-profit business). But that’s an oversimplification that ignores a bunch of factors.
One, it’s not as simple as just price. You also have to consider sales velocity. Price and sales velocity tend to be inversely correlated. In other words, as prices increase, sales velocity tends to naturally slow. You then begin to trade-off higher prices for increased time (which has a cost) and more market risk.
As I’ve said many times before on the blog, development happens on the margin. Usually the way this plays out is that you create a development pro forma, you look at all of your project costs, and then you say, “oh shit.” You’re then stretching to figure out how you’re going to make the math work.
Two, there are usually always parts of a city where development isn’t feasible (in some unfortunate cases, it might be the entire city). The potential revenues simply don’t support the costs. And as costs continue the rise, any areas that have not seen a corresponding increase in prices and/or rents will also become undevelopable.
So there’s price, and there’s also a question of where great buildings are even possible. As many have already pointed out, it’s certainly not everywhere.
blogTO recently published a piece about the West Toronto Railpath: “the city’s hidden urban trail next to the train tracks.” In this particular instance, the headline is actually pretty accurate. (If you know blogTO, you’ll know what I mean.) I think that there are a lot of Torontonians who don’t know this railpath exists. Build over top of a decommissioned rail line (but adjacent to an active one), the railpath is a 2.1 km trail that runs from the Junction in the north (basically adjacent to Junction House) to Dundas West & Sterling Road in the south. But there are plans to extend it further south to Queen West. Public meeting number two was held back in February of this year (presentation here) and construction of the extension is expected to start as early as next year. The City has to acquire some additional lands in order to make this all happen.
Here’s a map from the City showing both the current West Toronto Railpath and the planned extension:
What I like about this map is that it starts to show you just how multi-modal the city is becoming and how important these individual initiatives are for our broader mobility network. Here you can see how the WTR currently connects into the Bloor GO / Union Pearson Express station and how the extension will bring it within striking distance of the planned King-Liberty Village station. You can see how the railpath will interface with the Davenport Diamond Greenway that I wrote about last month (mustard color). And you can see the various pedestrian/cycle crossings that have already been built to better stitch the city together. Though hidden to some, these pathways, greenways, and crossings are critical to how many people commute and enjoy this great city. I have certainly been doing a lot of the latter this summer. Almost exclusively atop two wheels.
