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: laneway housing

  • From back of house to front of house

    Daniel Foch, Daniel Clark, and Adam Darvay recently stopped by Mackay Laneway House to film a last-minute video tour before the new tenants move in. They had quite the rig setup (see above). There was also a drone flying around that is not pictured here. The full house tour should be available in about two weeks and I’ll be sure to share here on the blog.

    One of the things we talked about during the tour was the future of laneway housing in Toronto. Will we see strong adoption going forward and, if yes, what does that mean for Toronto’s laneways? I think we will continue to see a steady increase in the number of laneway suites that get built in Toronto each year. And so eventually this form of living will become a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape. It’s happening fast.

    Now consider what this could mean for Toronto’s laneways. As garages and parking spaces get slowly replaced by new housing, it will mean that our laneways could at some point flip from being vehicle first to pedestrian first. Mackay Laneway House does not have any vehicular parking. The front door is off the laneway. You enter on foot. That’s how you experience the lane. And Gabriel and I thought it should be celebrated.

    If or when this tipping point occurs, it will trigger a perception change. Slowly but surely we will start to think of our lanes not as back of house, but as front of house. And when that happens, it’ll almost certainly force us to rethink how we design them. Forget utilitarian. Our laneways have the potential to become some of the most pedestrian-friendly streets in the city, especially with a few streetscape and landscape improvements.

    Pushing this idea even further, could you imagine a world where our laneways not only become more front of house, but where the laneway side becomes the more desirable side of the property? If we gave people the option, how many would prefer to build their main house on what is today considered to be the backside? (Remember how things once flipped in Paris?)

    But for the fact that we have an entrenched built form that could make this “inversion” challenging, I think there are people who would prefer to have their front door on the quieter and more pedestrian-friendly side of their property. Either way, I continue to believe that we are in the early stages of an ADU/laneway housing revolution. And things are just getting started.

  • Mackay Laneway House is now complete and available for rent

    Eleven years and a few setbacks later and we now have a completed laneway house.

    As Bill Gates once said, “most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

    Construction is all finished up and Mackay Laneway House is available for rent starting immediately.

    For photos and more information, click here.

  • Compact housing for the future of our urban spaces

    “Unexpected approaches for the future of our urban spaces.” Publisher Gestalten has a new book out that you can pre-order called, Vertical Living: Compact Architecture for Urban Spaces. The book is not about tall buildings, despite what the title might suggest, but rather about “impossibly slender homes” in narrow and tight urban spaces. As many of you know, I have long been a fan of compact and creative homes. One, they force creativity. It’s like designing a boat (not that I have done that before). Every inch matters. And two, it is about seeing opportunity where others don’t.

    Sometimes we miss these opportunities because of cultural biases. We believe that a home should look and behave a certain way. But these viewpoints are not necessarily universal. They vary across cities and they can even vary within cities. As Toronto and many other cities around the world try and figure out how to deliver the so-called “missing middle,” we are going to need to open ourselves up to some of what’s in this book — namely the unexpected. New housing solutions that don’t fit within certain neat and tidy definitions.

    We’ve done this before with laneway suites. Formerly an illegal housing type, Toronto is now in the midst of what feels like a laneway housing boom. I don’t know exactly how many are under construction or have been completed under the city’s new policies, but I would wager that the uptake has been strong. And over time, this new housing typology is going to reshape how we think about our laneways. They will evolve along with the new uses that are now beginning to flank them. The unexpected will become the expected.

    Shall we try this again?

    Image: Gestalten

  • The most unremarkable streets in Toronto

    Within Toronto’s urban structure you have regular streets and you have things known as “Avenues.” (This is among a bunch of other stuff such as Centres and Employment Areas.) What this Avenue designation does is tell you that it may be a suitable location for a new mid-rise building, which is something that I have written a lot about on this blog. Here in Toronto, this means that you would then need to consult the “Mid-Rise Building Performance Standards.” Indeed, if you dust off these standards and turn to the introduction, you’ll find the following: “The Performance Standards are intended to provide simple, straightforward guidance for those seeking to develop midrise projects on the Avenues.”

    But if you want to find some of the most truly unremarkable streets in this city, you need to look at the arterial roads that didn’t quite make the cut to be an Avenue. I don’t want to generalize, but they are generally exceedingly ugly. You can’t help but feel like Toronto has simply outgrown the low-rise building typologies that, in most cases, still remain on these streets. In some cases, they’re also directly adjacent to a subway station, which is kind of like running a great big movie theater with only a handful of seats inside. Maybe one day they’ll grow up to be Avenues. But don’t hold your breath. So what’s another possible solution? Toronto-based PHAEDRUS Studio has an idea. It’s called the Hi-Lo Hybrid.

    Initially designed for a specific client and a specific site, it also happens to be something that could be deployed all across the city. What they have shown here is a 5 storey infill building on your typical long and narrow Toronto lot. As designed, it could house 4-8 units, as well as some non-residential uses, on a lot that previously only had 1-3 units. It would make a lot of sense for some of the ugly streets that I’m talking about. But let’s be honest: it would be almost impossible to get approved. One of the biggest issues would probably be the adjacency/overlook issue that it generates with the neighboring backyards. It’s probably also too tall.

    One of the main reasons why, I think, laneway suites work and are now permissible as-of-right in Toronto is that they replace existing garages. (ADU’s for the Americans.) They reallocate space that was previously used for cars to humans. And so the incremental height / density is not all that great. They, for the most part, preserve precious neighborhood character. What the Hi-Lo Hybrid proposes is not so incremental. It’s bold. It would be a massive fight. I know that and you know that. But bold is generally what you need when you’re trying to do great things and when you’re trying to shape the future. And so with that, I’ll leave you all with some words from the late American architect, Daniel Burnham.

    “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”

  • The case for density transition zones (and why people will probably hate them)

    Toronto is known for its tall buildings and its contrasting low-rise neighborhoods. More recently, we have seen a proliferation of mid-rise buildings along the city’s “Avenues.” This is despite the many challenges and costs associated with this building typology.

    But I think it’s pretty clear that a further evolution is also underway. Laneway housing, which is now permitted “as-of-right,” is in the early stages of being adopted and built out all across the city. And eventually I think we’ll see many of Toronto’s laneways evolve into fully fledged residential streets; perhaps not all that dissimilar from what you might find in compact cities like Tokyo.

    This is very exciting to me and I think of it as the city gaining a third hierarchy of residential streets. We’d have our major arteries and avenues. We’d have our residential side streets. And then we’d have our compact laneways. Dare I say that maybe some of these laneways could even house non-residential uses such as small-scale offices.

    But along with this shift, I think it’s time we look at another infill opportunity — something that planners Blair Scorgie and Sean Hertel are calling “density transition zones.” What these zones hope to be is a new middle transition zone between low-rise neighborhoods (where laneway suites are already permitted) and mid-rise avenues. A place where “missing middle” type housing might be built in close proximity to major streets and existing transit. Let’s call it a 100-200m zone that sits right behind our avenues.

    In my mind this is immediately beneficial for two reasons. The first is obvious. It could be a place for frictionless missing middle housing. Housing that’s more dense than a single family home + laneway suite, but less dense than a typical mid-rise building.

    The second immediate benefit is that this transition zone could be used to help improve the overall feasibility of mid-rise avenue development. The reality is that there are many blocks along Toronto’s avenues where the lot depths are simply too shallow for proper mid-rise buildings. Density transition zones could help with this, which would be not that dissimilar from how “Enhancement Zones” were intended to work (they were never approved).

    If this were to happen, I think there would also be a strong case for softening some of the “requirements” in the mid-rise design guidelines. Requirements like the 45 degree angular plane that new buildings generally need to conform to. All of this would only help the overall feasibility of more European-scaled developments along Toronto’s avenues and, in my opinion, that would be a great thing.

    But for the same reasons that Enhancement Zones were highly contentious, I would expect a lot of grouchy people and a lot of pushback on this idea. There will be concerns about encroaching on our single-family neighborhoods, and there will be the usual objections that come up with any new development (density, traffic, dog poo, etc.) But if we’re serious about building more missing middle housing, we are going to need to find ways to remove the barriers to entry. This scale of housing is simply too small to support a great deal of friction.

    To learn more about how density transition zones might work, I would encourage you to check out the great site that Blair and Sean have put together, over here.

    Image: Density Transition Zones

  • How not to build missing middle housing

    Here is a good example of why “missing middle” housing is so challenging to build in Toronto, despite everyone talking about how great it would be if only we could build more of it.

    It’s the story of a minor variance application that was asking to sever a 50-foot lot at 2165 Gerrard Street East so that two semi-detached buildings and two laneway suites could be built. It would have added 10 family-sized rental units to a site that is on a streetcar line and that is within walking distance of both the subway and regional rail. And yet the consent to sever was denied.

    How come you ask?

    “I don’t believe dividing the property is in the best interest of the community,” said committee member Carl Knipfel, himself an architect and planner who complimented the beauty of the existing house and critiqued the design of the new buildings. “What is proposed is too dense … I really have serious concerns as to where this consent may lead us.”

    The last sentence is the best part.

    The article then goes on to argue that this is really all about the supremacy of single family homes and the desire to keep renters out of these neighborhoods. (Hey Airbnb, it’s not just short-term rentals that people have a problem with; it’s also long-term rentals.)

    The kicker, for Mr. Galbraith [the project’s planner], is he knows if he wanted to sever the lot for two single-family homes he could get that permission without delay and likely also get permission to build more than local zoning allows.

    “I can get variances for a one-unit McMansion every day of the week,” he said. “Lot coverage variances are very common; you want to take a bungalow down and make some big ugly house with a weird roof and a high first floor? You see those all over East York and Etobicoke.”

    If missing middle-type housing is “too dense” for sites that are endowed with every form of fixed rail transit that we have available in this city, then your guess is as good as mind as to where the hell it’s supposed to go. It’s time to grow up Toronto.

  • Project Profile: Tiam in Hue, Vietnam

    It has been over a month and so it’s probably time for another edition of project profile. In this edition we are going small and looking at yet another cool infill project built on top of an impossibly tight urban site. In this case, it’s a 35 square meter corner lot in Hue, Vietman.

    Designed by Nguyen Khai Architects & Associates (NKAA), the entire project is about 150 square meters and was built to house both a ground floor cafe (run by the owners) and a multi-generational family of 7.

    According to the drawings, the second floor is for mom and dad and their two daughters. The third floor is for the grandparents and an uncle. And the fourth floor is a “sacred space” that includes a large outdoor terrace.

    Of course, in order to house all of these functions and people on such a small site, you have to really think about interior space much differently. The “bedrooms” are probably not what you might be expecting.

    To put the scale of this project into some sort of context, the footprint of this site is smaller than that of the laneway house that we are currently building. And in the case of the laneway house, it has been designed to house 1-2 people, instead of 7.

    Space is, perhaps, all about perspective. I just wonder what would happen if all 7 family members tried to jump on a Zoom call at the same time.

    All photos via NKAA.

  • Preferred method of communication

    I was “on site” this morning for the installation of the helical piers for my laneway suite (that will be the topic of a separate post). More often than not, I’m in the office. But I like going on site because, well, building things is fun. One of the things that I find interesting about being on site, though, is that my preferred method of communication always seems to change. When I’m in the office, I have a bias toward emails. That is the case for two reasons: 1) I’m usually focusing on something and I find that calls can be disruptive, and 2) emails can be a highly efficient way to communicate. Tell me what you need (in the shortest email possible) and I’ll try and respond as succinctly as I can. However, when I’m on site, all of a sudden I don’t want to do emails. I would rather talk on the phone. That becomes the most direct way to deal with things. I am mentioning this because communication is paramount. And many of us have different preferences for how we like to do it. Knowing those preferences can be helpful when you’re trying to get things done.

  • Mackay Laneway House is now under construction

    Well, it only took 11 years.

    I still remember the first time I walked into Etobicoke Civic Centre and showed the lady at the counter my design for a laneway house. She didn’t know what a laneway house was and she couldn’t figure out where it fronted. “Wait, it’s behind the main house? It has no frontage. Where’s the street? Huh?” A lot has changed over the past decade, as I knew it would. All of the building permits are now in and Mackay Laneway House is under construction in Toronto’s Corso Italia neighborhood.

    Kilbarry Hill is overseeing the construction process. (Construction was supposed to start earlier this summer, but COVID-19 had something to say about that.) Regular updates will be posted on the Globizen blog and on the socials, with the goal of creating a kind of “how-to guide” for laneway suites. Expect detailed construction updates, a list of the individual trades that are being used, post-completion costing information, and probably a bunch more.

    The first order of business is the site servicing work, all of which has to be done via the existing house. No connections off the mains because, remember, these are intended to be secondary suites, similar to basement apartments. This raises the question of how best to submeter the utilities. Thankfully, the good folks over at Lanescape were kind enough to share how they have done it.

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  • Deferring development charges on a laneway suite

    Currently, if you’re building an Ancillary Secondary Dwelling Unit (such as a laneway suite) in the City of Toronto, you can defer the payment of any development charges for 20 years from the date that a building permit is issued for the unit. But really what this means is that, if you don’t do anything bad for 20 years (event of default), you won’t have to pay anything. The payable charge goes to $0 at the end of the term and the agreement goes away. Cool.

    So what are some of the bad things that you’re not supposed to do?

    Well the main thing is that you’re not allowed to create a new lot at any point during the 20-year deferral period. This is because the laneway suite policies are designed to encourage the creation of new rental housing and not new for sale housing. So you can’t sever off the back of your lot. The other thing you need to do is make sure that if you were to ever sell your property that the new owner(s) assumes these same obligations.

    This all makes sense.

    There is some fine print to consider. The payable development charge amount that the City enters into these agreements is the rate for single detached dwellings. Currently that figure is $76,830. This is more than double what you would have to pay if you, well, just paid the DCs for your ancillary secondary unit instead of deferring them. The reason for this is because, if you do do something bad such as sever your property, you’ve now no longer built an ancillary secondary unit. You’ve built a detached dwelling. Rates go up.

    Moral of the story: Don’t create a new lot. For more information on the program, click here.

    P.S. I’m not a lawyer. Please don’t take this post as any sort of legal advice. This post was also revised from its original version to correct a misunderstanding on my part.