Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1059

Okay, last Toronto-centric post for the week. We are back to regular scheduled programming tomorrow.

Later this month, Councillor Gord Perks will be hosting a community meeting for Junction House (see conceptual rendering above).

You can find all of the details,  here , on the Globizen blog. But pop it into your calendars: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 from 7 to 9pm.

Even if you can’t attend, definitely weigh in on the rooftop public art component over in the comments on the Globizen blog.

I hope to see you all there. It’s always nice when happy people come out.

This morning I presented and sat on a panel at BILD called “bringing laneway suites to Toronto.” The other participants were Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon , George Pantazis (Planner at the City of Toronto), Mike Collins-Williams (Director, Policy at OHBA ), and Andrew Sorbara (co-founder of Lanescape ).

Here is a photo that Mike took of me while I was talking about my failed laneway house :

For those of you wondering if/when this will happen in Toronto, here are the key takeaways from this morning: The city is already drafting laneway suite policies specific to Toronto & East York (not the other parts of the city) and they are due to report back to council in Q2-2018. Nothing is 100% certain at this stage, but there’s lots of optimism. 

Councillor McMahon delivered this morning’s opening remarks and I was impressed by her deep commitment to laneway suites. I was also impressed by her stance on NIMBYISM, saying that education is important and that we can’t let NIMBYs stop what makes sense for the greater city.

She gave the example of the 6 storey condominium  in her ward that faced fierce community opposition a number of years back. If you can’t put a midrise building on a main street in this city, where can you put it? 

Earlier today Slate announced that King Street Food Company will be bringing a new Buca restaurant concept to the north west corner of Yonge + St. Clair in 2018. 

(BlogTO calls Buca one of the best Italian restaurants in the city .)

Below is a rendering of the new podium design at 2 St. Clair West, which is where they’ll be going. The design/rendering is by Gensler  (the same talented group that did Ravine Bench ).

The corner is going to be transformed into a double-height space and the architecture is meant to express that feeling of grandeur at the intersection. There will also be an outdoor patio at grade.

We are all super excited about this.

If you would like to read the full press release, you can do that here .