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.
Matthew Slutsky (formerly of BuzzBuzzHome fame and now of Livabl fame) recently invited me on his podcast to talk about some of our current and upcoming condominium projects, as well as about the market in general.
Despite my best attempts, I only briefly talk about NFTs and crypto (in the context of our One Delisle project). So if any of you are sick of hearing that from me, the episode should be overall fairly tolerable.
To have a listen, click here. It’s about 30 minutes.
One of the most important considerations for livability in a multi-family building is the elevators. And as someone who has lived in a condominium building for the last 10 years, I know firsthand that it can be frustrating when they aren’t working properly. So this is obviously something that we pay a lot of attention to in our own projects.
The very general and crude rule of thumb is that you want at least 1 elevator for every 100 homes. For example, at Junction House, we have 151 suites and 2 elevators. So that means we have 1 elevator for every ~76 homes. At One Delisle, we have 371 suites and 4 elevators. So 1 for every ~93 homes. At the same time, I live in a building with 357 suites and 3 elevators (1 for every 119), and it works just fine.
But again, this is a very general rule of thumb. There are many other factors that can influence performance such as the number of levels in the building, the number of suites per floor, the number of below-grade parking levels, and so on. In my building, we have all above-grade parking, so I’m sure that impacts things.
If you have a building with a lot of below-grade parking, that will generally decrease performance all else being equal (i.e. increase weight times). Because now you have that many more stops, even if the number of homes remains constant above.
One common way to mitigate these impacts is to add a parking shuttle elevator. This is a dedicated elevator for just the parking levels, and it’s something that you’ll often see in office buildings. This helps service levels. It can also help the overall building efficiency (saleable area/gross construction area) by potentially eliminating the need for another elevator shaft in the above-grade levels.
But the trade-off is that you now need to transfer elevators, usually at the ground floor. Some people don’t mind this and think it helps with building security. If someone sneaks into the garage, there’s another obstacle to getting up into the residential floors. But it does mean that if you’re coming home with groceries in your hands, you need to take 2 elevators.
I’d be curious to hear from all of you what you think about parking shuttle elevators in residential buildings. Because I suspect that as building heights increase and as parking ratios continue to decline, parking shuttle elevators will likely become more common in cities like Toronto. Let me know in the comments below.
Disclaimer: I am not an elevator consultant! I am telling you just what I have learned over the years from speaking with actual professionals. So I recommend you speak with one before making any important elevator decisions on your own projects.
The winners of this year’s Architizer A+ Awards are out.
Now in its 11th year, the A+ Awards are intended to “honor the world’s best architecture and spaces.” And supposedly, it is also the world’s largest (119 categories) and most democratic architectural awards program. I don’t know, I read that here.
I went through the list of winners this evening (okay, I skimmed this Urban Toronto article), and I’m now excited to report that 13 Canadian projects/firms won an award — either a Jury Award, a Popular Choice Award, or a Special Mention.
I’m also excited to announce that one of the winners is our One Delisle project. It is the Jury Winner for best unbuilt multi-unit housing project (over 10 floors). Awesome!
If you’d like to see the full list of winners, click here.
Back in 2020/2021 when we were getting ready to launch sales for One Delisle, the team came up with the idea of pill-shaped kitchen islands for our residences.
What that means is we wanted to use perfect semi-circles on both ends. We didn’t want oval islands. We didn’t want distorted semi-circles. We wanted islands shaped like pills!
We felt these opened up the kitchens and also looked really unique. So with Studio Gang and the rest of the team, we proceeded to design a few different types.
We needed ones that would work for smaller suites, we needed ones that would work for larger suites, and we needed to accommodate breakfast bars/seating.
When we approached Scavolini Toronto about this idea their first response was, “we’ve never done this before. It would be a first.”
However, their second response was, “but we’ll figure it out with you.” And based on this response, we built (by hand) a pill-shaped island for our condominium sales gallery, and then included them as part of One Delisle.
Fast forward to 2023 and we are now in the “let’s figure it out phase”. This week we reviewed the very first production prototypes in Scavolini’s factory in Pesaro.
They are everything we could have hoped for, and we are thrilled that Scavolini was a willing partner in this endeavor.
It’s not easy doing new things in construction. The smallest things can (usually?) end up being a lot more work. But it all feels worth it when you get to see the results.
One of the things that I have wanted to do since I was in architecture school was visit the Venice Biennale. Partially because I would hear people say, ” so and so exhibited at the Biennale this year”, and that made it sound cool. But mostly because it’s the oldest cultural exhibition of its kind in the world — it was inaugurated in 1895 — and because there’s an entire section of it dedicated to architecture. So I’m excited to say that it looks like this month is going to be the month.
The way I am told the Venice Biennale of Architecture works is that there are two main components. There are the national pavilions in the Biennale Gardens, and there is the Arsenale, which is where lots of different nations exhibit under one roof. Canada is one of the 29 countries that has its own pavilion and, if you aren’t familiar with its history, it’s worth watching this short video:
At the time of writing this post, it only had 277 views, so I’m guessing that most of you have not seen it. I felt patriotic when I watched it, because the purpose of these pavilions is that they host each country’s official representation during the Biennale. It’s Canada to the world and that makes me proud. This year, Canada is being represented by Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) with an exhibit called “Not for Sale!”
Here’s an excerpt from the project description:
Real estate speculation is a form of extortion. It converts homes into spatio-financial assets, changing the form, function, and aesthetics of housing to better serve the logics of wealth storage and speculation. The process is violent, resulting in an urban environment that is racist, sexist, and classist at a systemic level. This global phenomenon is nowhere more visible than in Canada, a country whose economy is now dominated by real estate.
In other words, it looks like the pavilion is going to be turned into a scathing criticism of what I do for a living: real estate development. How neat! The other neat thing about the Venice Biennale is that One Delisle is going to be featured in an exhibition called, “Reconceptualizing Urban Housing.” Our team has been working on this project with Studio Gang since 2016, and so it’s a great honor to have it recognized on such a global stage.
It also means that the Venice Biennale is going to simultaneously tell me that my work is doing some amount of good for Toronto, and that I’m also contributing to racism, sexism, and classism at a systemic level. I can’t wait.
Earlier this week, I shared this image of Corktown Condos on my Instagram. It represents the first phase of Slate’s two-phase project in Hamilton, and I’m excited to announce that we’ll be launching sales this spring (both in Hamilton and in Toronto).
We love Hamilton. It has walkability, transit, a wonderful stock of old buildings, and a dynamic and growing cultural scene. In other words, it has all of the characteristics that we look for when it comes to new projects. And here, our approach to city building is exactly analogous to what we did in Toronto at Yonge & St. Clair.
Those of you who are familiar with our work will know that Slate owns 8 office buildings in midtown, including all four corners of the Yonge & St. Clair intersection. And that we have spent the last decade investing in these buildings, investing in the public realm, investing in public art, and working to support businesses in the area. Then in 2021, we launched sales on a landmark condominium tower called One Delisle that is now under construction.
Here in Hamilton, we are similarly investing in economic development and in housing. Last year, it was announced that we acquired approximately 800 acres of industrial land and buildings on Hamilton’s waterfront. This site alone has the potential to create up to 23,000 new jobs across the region and inject up to $3.8 billion into Ontario’s economy. It will likely also take some time and be measured in decades.
We prefer to think of ourselves as city builders. And that means taking a long-term view and thinking about the broader city — not just about our individual projects. So for us, Corktown is part of a much larger and longer-term commitment to the City of Hamilton. And we couldn’t be more excited to share it with all of you in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned. And if you’d like to register for Corktown, you can do that over here.
The most boring part of constructing a high-rise, like One Delisle, has got to be installing the shoring piles. Sure there are big rigs moving about on site but, for the most part, there’s almost no visible progress. That is, until you start excavating. Then you get to see said piles and you also end up with a big hole, which is something.
Thankfully shoring works are now complete at One Delisle and we have started on the big hole part (see above photo from our rooftop cam). The next major milestone will be our “bottoming out,” and that’s when the tower crane will go up and our massive raft slab foundation will get poured. Visible progress is certainly more fun.
This week AN announced its 2022 Best of Design Awards, which is intended to celebrate outstanding built and unbuilt architectural projects from around the world. And this year I am excited to share that Studio Gang was awarded two editors’ picks: one for 11 Hoyt in Brooklyn (Built-Residential, Multi-Unit) and one for One Delisle here in Toronto (Unbuilt-Residential, Multi-Unit). Selfishly, it of course makes me very happy to see our project being celebrated for its architecture. Go team! But from a less selfish perspective, it also makes me very happy to see Toronto being recognized in these awards. Because this is about city building, right?
Thursday mornings have become my construction site time. I start off at Junction House. I walk the site with the team. We meet and use a lot of profanities. And then I head over to One Delisle for a similar set of activities. It is one of my favorite times of the week because, as a developer, you get to see all of your work coming together in a real and physical thing.
The views can also be pretty nice. Here is photo of the downtown skyline from Junction House this morning (there was a bit of fog):
I know this goes without saying, but I think it is crucial to walk one’s sites. There’s no way to do this in sweatpants over Zoom. You need to see the details. You need to build relationships. And you need to problem solve with the team. It’s also a great opportunity to learn — generally and from mistakes — and get better as a professional.
Here’s the thing about development: sometimes you’re flying at 10,000 feet and sometimes you’re talking about how many layers of drywall are appropriate for demising walls. It’s a lot of fun.
