Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 391

This entire city is centered around controlling water. Omnipresent front-door flood dam:

Venice has great doorbell game. If it hasn’t already been done, I think someone should make a coffee table book of these:

This city is also quite prolific when it comes to urban laundry:

We found a number of these street ladders. Presumably laundry related:

Religion in the streets:

Window garden:

Balcony gardens. Your reminder that (1) small balconies can still be impactful and that (2) balconies with a relationship to the street are used differently:

Colorful shoes and green curtains:

Grand Canal:

The kind of street we should allow in North American cities:

Sam Zell, the billionaire real estate investor, died this week at the age of 81 . That seems young to me. Or maybe I’m just being overly optimistic about life expectancy. This is around the US average.

Whatever the case, if you work in real estate, you likely know/knew of Sam. In my case, he spent a lot of time at Penn after he permanently endowed the real estate center (under both his name and his late business partner’s name).

I used to go and listen to him speak at least twice a year, and I would hang off his every word as a young student of real estate. “So wait, how does this all work?”

It was also at this time that he sold Equity Office to Blackstone for $39 billion (back in 2007, it was the largest private equity deal in history). Sam’s explanation for doing this deal was that Blackstone offered him more than what he thought the portfolio was worth, so he sold it. He took no credit for good market timing.

If you’ve ever heard Sam speak, you know that he’s incredibly direct. Generally, he also didn’t seem to give a fuck, and was happy being the only person in a Hawaiian shirt among a sea of blue and black suits.

In fact, he’s largely the reason that, as students, we used to all joke that the richer the speaker, the more funny and honest they would be. “Come on, let’s go to this one. She’s rich.” I guess this is just what happens when you no longer have anything to prove.

But none of this is to say that he didn’t care. He cared a great deal about the school and about helping young students. And for that, I say: thank you Sam. Thank you for being generous with your time.

Today is a travel day, so I don’t have a whole lot to say. But BlogTO did just publish a story about our Junction placemaking sign: “ This intersection is set to become Toronto’s next best photo-op. ” I am also happy to report that the sign’s timer has now been installed, which means that, starting today, it will get illuminated each night from sunset to 11PM. (We’re required to shut it off at this time because, you know.)

So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive. And I truly hope that this installation will become a symbol for the Junction neighborhood. This was our sole purpose for pursuing it. It would also be ironic if something that was so difficult to get approval for ends up being loved by city. Perhaps it’s a lesson that stubbornness can be a good thing when you believe in something.