Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 113

It has been over four years since the Surfside tragedy in South Florida and the partial collapse of the 12-storey Champlain Towers South building. In response to this, the state of Florida enacted stricter condominium regulations . Buildings over 30 years old (or over 25 years if located within three miles of a coast) must now undergo mandatory structural inspections. Condominium reserve funds are also required to be fully funded, and owners can no longer waive or reduce the contributions. Surprisingly, this was not the case before.

The site itself has also moved forward. In May 2022, Dubai-based DAMAC International acquired the 1.8-acre parcel for $120 million. They hired Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and, in 2023, submitted designs to the Town of Surfside. Earlier this year, pre-construction condominium sales launched for The Delmore — with a starting price of $15 million and an average price of $40 million. And this month, the developer announced that they have secured a foundation permit.

With only 37 condominiums in the project, the land cost alone works out to over $3.2 million per suite.

Rendering via DAMAC

Waymo has just been granted approval to test its autonomous vehicles in New York City. The permit allows up to eight of the company's Jaguar SUVs to circulate in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. And according to the company, the plan is to start "immediately." This first approval only runs until the end of September, after which it will need to be extended — but I'm guessing that shouldn't be too difficult to obtain.

What's noteworthy about this announcement is that (1) New York City is a big and complex place and (2) it's the first city for Waymo that receives snow. The company currently operates in San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

That said, the company has been doing cold weather testing since, I think , 2012. And in 2016, they opened a 53,000-square-foot self-driving center in Michigan for this purpose. They've also run tests in Truckee, California, Upstate New York, and the Detroit area. So presumably its sensors are ready to melt snow and ice. But it's looking like the true test will be on the streets of New York.

Next should be Toronto.

I came across this chart from Benedict Evans on LinkedIn . (I must have been doing my quarterly check-in to see what the AI models are saying.) It shows US construction value broken down by offices, retail, warehouses (industrial), and data centers.

The office cyclicality is interesting to see. But of course, the point of this chart is the dramatic rise in data center construction. As of August 2025, it's about 2x retail construction and it's on track to overtake both offices and warehouses.

Will this happen and is this pace of construction sustainable? I frankly don't know. But AI and the need for more compute are obviously here to stay.

I'm reminded of something that venture capitalist Fred Wilson once wrote on his blog . His argument was that when it comes to speculative frenzies, or just new stuff in general, it's common to be directionally correct, but be off in terms of the order of magnitude .

I wouldn't be surprised if this proves to be true for AI-driven investments.