Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1431

Earlier this week a good friend of mine from Rotman, Frank Luengo, launched his own blog called Frank’s Vault .

Given that he has used the same theme as I have here, I like to think it was inspired by ATC :) But whatever the case may be, his mission is: “…to simplify the complicated, and to bring Bay Street and Main Street a little closer together.” In other words, it’s a finance blog. And I’m really enjoying it so far.

Last summer Frank told me that he was thinking about starting this and so I’m thrilled that he finally decided to do it. I’ve talked many times before about the benefits of personal blogging , and so I won’t repeat them here. But I did want to mention one other thing. When Frank told me he launched, one of the first things I did was congratulate him on claiming frankluengo.com.

And I did that because I’m a big proponent of owning your firstnamelastname.com . I look at internet domains as virtual real estate and I, therefore, look at firstnamelastname.com as your own piece of branded real estate on the internet. If you don’t buy it up, somebody else will. That’s obviously why I own brandondonnelly.com and why I host ATC on it.

But since I’m such a believer in real estate – both the offline and online varietals – I actually own many others. I also own brandondonnelly.co, brandondonnelly.ca, and brandondonnelly.me . The latter one links to my tumblog, and the first 2 just redirect to this site. I don’t derive much utility from having all these URLs, but I just want them so that nobody else can get them.

So if you haven’t yet thought about it, I would encourage you to think about claiming your own piece of real estate on the internet. I use Namecheap.com to buy my domains, but there are many others out there.

Urban Land Magazine recently published an interesting article on the Hudson Yards project in New York , which is the largest private real estate development project ever undertaken in the United States. Click here for the article . Thanks to my friend  Evan Schlecker  for passing it along. It’s a good read.

The project is being co-developed by Related out of New York and Oxford Properties out of Toronto, and when it’s all said and done, it’ll be over 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space. It’s a $20 billion development project. 

But beyond just being massive and epic, there are a bunch of other things that make this project unique. You can read about them all in Urban Land, but I’d like to share a few snippets with you all here:

The first is about the project’s placement on top of a rail yard:

In order to make use of a site already occupied by a working rail yard—including more than 30 tracks for the Long Island Rail Road and three train tunnels, with a fourth under construction—most of the development will be built atop two steel-and-concrete platforms. That base, and the buildings on it, will be supported by hundreds of concrete-filled caissons, which will be drilled between the rail lines into the bedrock.

Because the location of the tracks and tunnels limits the placement of caissons, only 38 percent of the site can be used to support buildings.

The second is about the project’s use of technology:

Beyond that, a vast number of sensors embedded in the site’s infrastructure will collect mountains of data on everything from temperature and air quality to pedestrian and vehicle traffic. That information, which will be scrutinized in real time by managers in an effort to fine-tune Hudson Yards’ operation, will also be shared with New York University (NYU) researchers, who will turn Hudson Yards into a laboratory for studying urban life and finding ways to improve its quality.

And the last one is about how it interfaces with the High Line ( click here if you don’t know what that is):

Pedersen [of Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates ] found an intriguing way to address the building’s surroundings. He allowed the High Line—a public park built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the West Side—to penetrate underneath the tower through a 60-foot-long (18.3 m) public passageway, so that the building will interact with the park and its visitors. Inside the building, a dramatic atrium “becomes the terminus of the High Line as it moves from south to north,” he says.

So there are a lot of interesting and exciting things going on with this project. What’s amazing though is how “vertical” this community will be. You have rail lines below grade. Platforms on top. Retail at grade and across multiple levels. And an elevated linear park cutting through the buildings. Not every city can make this work. New York can.

Images: Hudson Yards New York

I received an email from an ATC reader yesterday who is working on a publication about reimagining public spaces in Toronto. She sent me a few questions and specifically wanted to talk about the Yonge Redux project , which I wrote about a month ago. After I responded to her questions, I figured I should just share them publicly. So here they are:

How would citizens from different age groups benefit from the Yonge Redux project?

I would bet you that this stretch of Yonge Street experiences more pedestrian traffic than it does car traffic. And yet we’ve allocated space in the opposite direction: cars have more space than pedestrians do. So what this project is really about is reallocating the street, or public right-of-way, so that the dominant uses are actually prioritized through urban design. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. Ultimately, this will benefit people both young and old.

Do you know what kind of professionals are needed to complete a project like this?

You’d need an architect/designer – one who is awesome at landscape/urban design work. gh3 here in the city comes to mind as a firm I like, if you want an example. You’d need a bunch of engineers to deal with stormwater management and other infrastructure items. You’d likely need a transportation/traffic consultant to assess traffic flows in the area and prove that this project won’t cause the entire city to come to a grinding halt (it won’t). You would need someone to manage the day-to-day of the entire project. And this is just naming a few of the professionals/consultants that you’d probably end up needing.

You’d also have to work closely with the city, the local councillor, and the local community. It’s inevitable that some of the businesses will worry about the loss of potential customers – so that would need to be worked through.

What are some areas in Toronto that, in your opinion, need reimagining in the next few years?

My feeling is that Toronto is still at the early stages of this shift towards better public spaces and a better public realm. But in many ways, projects like Yonge Redux are much easier sells compared to the other areas that could use a face lift. Yonge Street is already urban and pedestrian friendly. The real challenge is going to be dealing with the areas outside of the core – most of which, frankly, aren’t that welcoming to pedestrians and aren’t all that urban. What do we do with those? And do the local communities even want them transformed? They’re going to be much harder to reimagine (though I’m not saying we won’t be able to do it).

Where do you see the future of Toronto’s public spaces in the next 50 years?

All signs point to a more dense, more urban, and more transit-oriented city. With that shift, we’re going to increasingly realize the importance of incredible public spaces. So if we continue down this path, I reckon our public spaces will only get better. I’m optimistic about the future.

How would you personally approach a project like this?

My understanding is that this project has legs. It just has to work through the city bureaucracy at this point. Jennifer Keesmaat supports it.