Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1007

The New York Post has some interesting articles, here and here , on the growing retail vacancy problem in NYC. (Thank you Michael for the link in the comments this week.)

The vacancy rate on Amsterdam Avenue in the Upper West Side is said to be around 27% and it is said to be around 20% on a stretch of Broadway in Soho. It has become such a problem that Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to implement some sort of retail vacancy tax :

“I am very interested in fighting for a vacancy fee or a vacancy tax that would penalize landlords who leave their storefronts vacant for long periods of time in neighborhoods because they are looking for some top-dollar rent but they blight neighborhoods by doing it,” he said on WNYC . “That is something we could get done through Albany.”

But this is based on the assumption that greedy landlords are simply holding out for exorbitant rents. It doesn’t consider the fact that, maybe, there is simply too much retail space :

Only a few grasp the true scope of the problem. Vornado Realty Trust titan Steven Roth said we can only cure the national plague through “the closing and evaporation” of up to 30 percent of the weakest space — which would take five years.

All of this, of course, has me thinking about the future of ground floor main street retail. What are your thoughts?

Over a year ago I wrote about a Kickstarter campaign that wanted to make a documentary to celebrate “the golden era of Canadian graphic design.” 

And after I wrote about it, my friend Dave Wex – who, like me, is a lover of all things Canada – backed the project. Yesterday he flipped me the latest update. 

The trailer is out and the world premiere of Design Canada is scheduled for Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at the Hot Docs Cinema here in Toronto. After that, it will move to Montreal and Vancouver. 

If you can’t see the trailer below, click here .

[vimeo 263571655 w=640 h=280]

Tickets available,  here .

Tishman Speyer just unveiled a new condo project in Brooklyn called 11 Hoyt . And it just so happens to be Studio Gang’s first residential project in New York City. Preview above. More renderings over here .

It’s a 51 storey condominium with 480 residences and 55,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities. The unit mix ranges from studios to four-bedroom residences, and prices range from $600,000 to over $4 million (USDs, of course).

If you’re from Toronto, you’re probably looking at the renderings and thinking to yourself: “There are no balconies or outdoor spaces.” But that’s fairly typical in the NYC market, as I understand it.