Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1334

Airbnb is a platform that connects people who have extra space with people who need space. It’s a peer-to-peer hospitality company.

Yeloha , which is a startup I just discovered today, is a peer-to-peer solar company based out of Boston. 

In the same vein as Airbnb, it connect people who have extra roof space (that’s suitable for solar collection) with people who want to buy solar energy (but may not have a solar friendly roof).

Here’s an image from their website that explains how it works:

Basically, if you have a solar friendly roof, Yeloha will come and install solar panels on top of your place for free. You get to keep some of the energy that’s generated (about 1/3 apparently) which becomes a credit to your electricity bill. You are then known as a “Sun Host.”

The remaining energy gets fed back into the grid and, if you don’t have a solar friendly roof, you can purchase this excess energy, which also results in a credit to your electricity bill. The solar electricity is less expensive than the regular grid electricity. In this case, you are known as a “Sun Partner.”

I think this is a pretty neat idea. Neither party has to pay anything upfront. Both parties save money. And the result is more solar through a distributed and virtual net metering setup.

Yesterday CAPREIT announced that we have entered into our first joint venture development agreement for a mixed-use project at 1100 King Street West in Toronto’s Liberty Village neighborhood. 

The agreement is to acquire a 1/3 undivided interest in the residential component of the project for $60.3M. The residential component will consist of 3 towers and 506 apartment suites (sitting on top of a roughly 160,000 square foot commercial/retail podium that will not be owned by CAPREIT).

Here’s what Thomas Schwartz, President and CEO of CAPREIT had to say:

“We expect our interest in the property, combined with the property management fees we will receive, will be accretive to our cash flow and set the stage for similar partnerships, along with our own new rental developments in the future.”

As a member of the development team at CAPREIT, it feels great to get this one out there.

Click here for the full public press release.

https://500px.com/embed.js

Early this morning Professor Robert Wright – who is a regular reader and commenter on this blog – sent me an article from The Guardian called, ‘The Olympics are dead’: Does anyone want to be a host city any more?  And that got me thinking.

With Toronto having just hosted the Pan Am Games (the Parapan Am Games are still going on), there’s a lot of talk and debate happening in this city right now about whether or not we should make a go at hosting the 2024 Summer Games. The deadline for cities to express their interest is September 15th, 2015.

The supporters (of which I would include myself) say it’s a great opportunity for civic (re)branding and urban renewal. It creates real deadlines to get things done . But the naysayers argue it’s a fiscal disaster waiting to happen. See 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal .

But in my view there are ways to host the Olympics and there are ways not to host the Olympics. Montreal (1976) is an example of what not to do. And Los Angeles (1984) and Barcelona (1992) are some of the best examples of what to do.

The key is to think of the Olympics not as the end, but more as the beginning. In Olympic talk, they refer to this as legacy. Here’s what Los Angeles managed to accomplish as a result of the 1984 Summer Games (via Gizmodo ):

In 1979, the L.A. organizing committee had made a deal. If the games saw any profits, LA84 would give 60 percent back to the U.S. Olympic Committee and keep 40 percent for Southern California. At the end of the games, the total expenditures came in at a respectable $546 million, but even more impressive was the profit: A surplus of $232.5 million, meaning $93 million would stay in the region. This was huge. The only other games at the time which could claim to be financially successful at all were the other L.A. Olympics: The ones held in the city in 1932.

The profits were used to create an endowment called the LA84 Foundation, which funds youth sporting events, resources, and facilities throughout the area. With smart management, the endowment has grown over the years, and over $214 million has helped an estimated three million children and 1,100 organizations in Southern California. Recently, the LA84 Foundation helped raise money to pay coaches and buy equipment at LAUSD high schools after budget cuts decimated their programs.

The rest of the above article is definitely worth a read. It’s a great example of fiscal prudence.

So what I am suggesting is not that we run blindly into hosting the Summer Games. But that we instead open our minds to the opportunities. Let’s great creative. If we could catalyze further city building, turn a profit, and leave meaningful legacies for this region (like what LA did), then why wouldn’t we want to have a go at it?