Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1547

This week was the first public meeting for the revitalization of Berczy Park in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood of Toronto. I wasn’t able to attend the meeting but, as a resident of the area, I am interested in the project and will be following.

In browsing through the project’s site , I came across an incredibly depressing photo of the St. Lawrence area from the 1970s. Here it is:

The empty greenish plot of land in the foreground is where Berczy Park sits today. The building at its point is the Flatiron Building, which is easily one of the most photographed buildings in the city.

What’s obviously remarkable about this image is just the sheer number of surface parking lots. There is no neighbourhood, really.

But even more depressing is the fact that all of this was seemingly deliberate. We tore down buildings to make way for all those parking areas. And that’s always upsetting. Here’s a photo of the same area in the 1920s (the Flatiron Building is at the bottom right):

It just goes to show how planning ideologies change.

But to our credit, look how far we’ve come since the 1970s. Today, the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood is one of the most vibrant downtown neighbourhoods. It’s become a model for mixed-income urban renewal - both here and abroad - and it continues to see strong investment.

So while we screwed it up before, we are making amends.

I sat on a panel tonight for a discussion on investing in condominiums . It was organized by the Six Degrees Real Estate Mixer group.

My overall position was that we’re now returning to a more balanced market. The days of massive appreciation and overnight riches are gone. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to see anywhere near the correction that the US housing market saw in 2008.

What I do think it means is that everyone - from developers to small investors - needs to remain focused on fundamentals. Buy quality assets in great locations and make sure the rental income is there. Cash is king. That’s fundamentally what the real estate business is about.

Overall, the data shows that developers are pulling back with respect to releasing new product to the market and that price appreciation has slowed, almost trading sideways. All of this is good for the market if you’re worried about a catastrophic crash.

I think the experience in the US has made us all paranoid about our own housing market. But it could end up saving us from repeating their mistakes.

When I was in grade school at the Toronto French School, I had an English teacher named Mr. Hoad (spelt correctly, I hope) who used to make us all keep a journal. We were supposed to write something in it everyday. No exceptions. It could be on any topic. We just had to write. And we did this for years.

Well, it just dawned on me that two decades later, I’ve come back to daily writing. I hadn’t consciously drawn the parallel until a friend mentioned to me that she used to “keep a journal”, but now it seems obvious.

Of course this journal is much more public than the one I used to have (and I had volumes of them). This one is designed to provoke interaction and engagement. Journals are a great way to work through thoughts in your mind, but today technology has made them amazing forums for discussion.