Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.

I clicked on this artist’s loft tour by Joshua Charow for two reasons: (1) it’s the kind of big, creative loft space that I would love to have for fun, and (2) $270 per month for a SoHo loft seems kind of reasonable.

The artist is Ben Schonzeit. He moved into the space in 1972, and this was his all-inclusive gross rent. In today’s dollars, Gemini estimates this to be around $2,175 per month, which no longer sounds so dirt cheap, but remains very reasonable for a massive high-ceilinged loft in SoHo. (As an aside, I don’t think most people calculate in real dollars all that well.)

There’s a lot that comes to mind with Ben’s story:

• The creation of architectural cast iron changed the economics around ornate facades like the ones you see in SoHo. But at the time, these would have been seen as cheap replicas of the original stone stuff. Architectural purists would have derided these facades for not following the doctrine of “truth to materials.” Of course, today, many would now view SoHo as an example of “we don’t build things like we used to.”

• Cities operate in cycles. But the flexible nature of these buildings, with their wide-open spans and large windows, allowed them to be easily repurposed.

• Ben and his artist contemporaries were gentrifiers of the neighbourhood. And they would have long been displaced by the market had they not been protected by policy. One way to look at this dynamic is that they’re getting paid — through below-market rents — for the cultural cachet they created and the sweat equity they put into gentrifying the area.

One of Jane Jacobs’s famous city-building mantras was, “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”” The reasoning for this is that new construction is expensive, whereas old, out-of-favour buildings offer the low-cost leeway needed for new ideas.

This was certainly true when Ben was signing his lease in SoHo following deindustrialization. But is it still true today? The new idea du jour is AI, and that seems to require a lot of new buildings. Fifty years from now, will there be new SoHo stories similar to Ben’s?

Many cities today treat local retail the way medieval towns treated tanneries: as an offensive nuisance that must be segregated from where people live. This has led us to our current debate over whether small-scale retail should be allowed deep inside residential neighbourhoods. It’s allowed, sometimes.

The detractors like to get people excited by suggesting that this will lead to all-night raves, multinational chains, or streets being overrun with cars. But of course, that is not what we’re talking about.

There are lots of case studies that we can point to. Japan, for instance, has a national zoning code that permits small-scale shops, home offices, and cafes in even its lowest-density, residential-only zone. From there, all subsequent zones work cumulatively, meaning more intensive zones generally inherit all previous uses. The result is a land-use approach that is default mixed-use.

Of course, there are also lots of examples that we can point to here in Toronto, and that’s because corner stores used to be a part of our daily life. But these remnant examples are generally found in the oldest, and most urban, parts of the city, and rejected in the inner suburbs.

It is no surprise that Toronto is once again divided on this issue and across its typical built-form lines. This division runs deep, and it will almost certainly resurface when Torontonians head to the polls this Monday.

At the end of the day, corner stores and local retail are an inherently urban sensibility. It is about not having to get into a car to grab a coffee or a soft washed-rind French cheese from Haute-Savoie. But we know that not all communities want to be urban.

One resident’s feature is another’s bug.

In the Penthouse Collection at One Delisle, which spans the top three floors of the building, the homes all have a fully covered loggia as one of their outdoor spaces. I say “one of” because these suites all have multiple outdoor spaces. If you’re buying a penthouse, I would imagine you want to own several different pieces of the sky.

Here’s a plan (this particular suite also has curved walls because it’s, you know, sexier):

I was on site this morning as the team was installing the curtain wall and panels for the southwest-facing loggia on the very top floor, and let me tell you that it is wildly impressive in person.

The idea behind these loggias was to create outdoor rooms, protected from the elements both above and on the sides so that they could be used for as long as possible throughout the year. We also provided the option of a hot tub for year-round use, which some purchasers did opt for.

The space was certainly showing off today on what was a beautiful fall day.