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: london

  • Paul Reichmann, dead at 83

    This past Friday, Paul Reichmann passed away in Toronto. He was 83. For those in the real estate business, Paul was a legend. He was the developer behind landmark office projects such as First Canadian Place in Toronto, World Financial Center in New York and Canary Wharf in London.

    He was the man behind Olympia & York, which by the late 80s was one of the largest real estate development firms in the world, making the Reichmann family the 7th richest family in the world. Their net worth reached $12.8 billion at its peak. In 1990 they owned 8% of New York’s commercial office space. This was more than twice as much as the Rockefellers.

    But what makes the Reichmann story so fascinating is the beginning and end of it.

    Paul was born in Vienna, but his family fled the Nazis and came to Toronto like many others at the time. He and his brothers setup a tiling company called Olympia Tile and its this business that eventually led them into real estate. 

    Paul became known for taking on huge risks. He believed firmly in the principles of risk and reward.

    I remember when I was at Penn hearing stories about Olympia & York from the Dean at the time, Gary Hack (a Canadian). He used to tell us about the phenomenal amounts of leverage that O&Y used to take on in order to scale.

    But ultimately it was this leverage that brought them down. In 1992, Olympia & York went bankrupt and the family was left with a net worth of less than $100 million. Still a great sum of money, but nowhere near the $12.8 billion they once had. The New York Times called it “one of the most astonishing financial collapses in history.”

    But in many ways, this is not an uncommon developer story. Real estate development is risky. And Paul did eventually rebuild. Not to where he was before, but he did come back. He became Chairman of Canary Wharf in London and went on to develop the tallest tower in Latin America.

    Last week Toronto lost one of its most prolific real estate minds. Paul was also largely part of an era that no longer exists. The real estate business in the 80s wasn’t as institutionalized as it is today. It was filled with larger than life individuals, such as Paul, taking on huge personal risks. It must have been an exciting time to be in real estate.

    Thanks for everything you’ve done for Toronto, Paul.

  • Toronto needs a consistent taxi brand

    For the sake of our global brand, Toronto taxis need to have a consistent brand – the same car, the same colour. I’ve thought about this before and written about it somewhere, but it’s worth repeating.

    I was driving around downtown on Saturday night and I started to compare the ratio of cabs to non-cabs on the road. As is typical for any weekend night, most of the cars were cabs. And yet they’re a complete hodgepodge of different car types and colours.

    The cab companies, of course, like it this way. They want to be differentiated. But from a practical standpoint, does this even matter? Sure, I might call a specific company to pick me up somewhere, but when I’m hailing a cab on the street I go for the first available car. I couldn’t care less what company it is. 

    The result of this heterogeneity though is that we’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to brand our city. New York has its yellow cabs, London has its black cabs and all of Germany has its beige Mercedes Benzes. In our psyche, those cars symbolize those cities.

    Just like companies, cities today compete with one another for talent and capital. It’s been said many times before that the vast majority of Millenials now choose where they want to live (which city) before they even start looking for a job. Toronto needs to be on the top of that last.

    Taxi branding may seem like a small detail, but it’s not. As a comparison, take for example the Shangri-La Hotel company. The first time I stayed at one of their hotels was in Vancouver. I remember asking one of the staff members about the fragrance that seemed to permeate the entire building.

    He told me that it was the “Essence of Shangri-La” and that it was actually diffused throughout the entire building, as well as around the perimeter. The purpose of this was to give global travels a familiar feeling – that feeling of being home – wherever they are in the world. Now that’s consistent branding.

    Similarly, being in Toronto should make you feel like you’re here and in no other city. Our lumbering streetcars certainly help with that, but our cabs don’t. In a time where globalization is making cities feel more and more alike, we need to be doing everything we can in order to differentiate.

    Hell, in addition to having the same car and colour, maybe we should even create an Essence of Toronto scent for our cabs.

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