Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 583

This past summer, the Bentway (in collaboration with the City of Toronto, the Waterfront BIA, and the Toronto Downtown West BIA) issued a call for expressions of interest to re-imagine two key intersections under downtown Toronto's elevated Gardiner Expressway. The York Street intersection and the Simcoe Street intersection.

That process has run its course and the following six teams have now been shortlisted:

York Street

• Sans Façon + Zeidler (Calgary/Toronto)

• LeuWebb Projects + DIALOG + Mulvey & Banani Lighting (Toronto)

• 5468796 Architecture Inc. (Winnipeg)

Simcoe Street

• O2 Planning & Design Inc. + Mulvey & Banani Lighting + ENTUITIVE (Calgary/Toronto)

• Daily Tous Les Jours + SvN Architects + Planners + Latéral (Montreal/Toronto)

• SOCA + Tiffany Shaw-Collinge + SHEEEP (Toronto/Edmonton)

The next step in this process is a nine-week design exercise where the above teams will go away and prepare their design concepts. We work with a number of the companies on this shortlist and I am sure that there will be some fantastic ideas that are put forward. After selecting the two winners, the plan is to then start construction in 2022.

The Bentway is doing some fantastic work in reimagining the underside of our downtown highway. This is yet another example of that. For more information about the competition, click here .

Photo by Brian Jones on Unsplash

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1449087312009256966?s=20

I was out for dinner this week with a group of real estate developers. And as you might expect, we spent the majority of the time talking about real estate and complaining about how long things take. But a good chunk of time was also spent pontificating about the world of crypto. That's what happens these days. In fact, one of my friends joked that my/this blog used to be a real estate and cities blog, but now it's a crypto blog. It's a joke, but I guess it's becoming partially true.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in what's new and what's next. And I think this is next. So I'm reading, playing, thinking, and writing about it. And the more I do these things, the more my conviction grows. But what really did it for me was the hands-on playing around part. I'm not interested in owning a crypto ETF (the US is about to get its first bitcoin ETF based on futures contracts). I want to own the cryptocurrencies directly so I can see what they can do and how everything works. (Though I will say that this space is still not very user friendly.)

One of the things that comes to mind as I continue to play is the future interrelationship between our offline and online worlds. Because already we are living in a world where people now buy and collect rent on virtual real estate in places like Decentraland (REITs are even starting to emerge). Where parties happen online instead of offline (but still attract big name DJs). Where people buy digital fashion instead of physical fashion, and pay just as much for it and sometimes even more. And where augmented reality is changing how we experience our cities in real life. A few weeks ago, I came across a park in Paris that had partnered with Snapchat to deliver an AR experience , to give just one example.

These are meaningful shifts that are gaining traction (and this post is by no means an exhaustive list). And while I remain steadfast in my belief that cities are profoundly resilient and real-world experiences are irreplaceable, I do believe that our emerging digital worlds are going to have an impact on how we design and build our cities going forward. From art murals of NFTs to entire new virtual worlds, this is an exciting time for cities and technology.

Enjoy the weekend.

A close friend of mine is part of a company here in Toronto called Ourboro. They are a home financing company that offer up to $250,000 toward down payments on homes. In exchange for this, they take a stake in the home and their pro-rata share of any future appreciation. So they are really co-owners. And they make their money on the gains. The maximum hold period is 10 years, but the principal owner is free to buy out Ourboro and stay in the home if they want.

It's an interesting model (and I have written about analogous ones before on the blog ). Because in expensive housing markets like Toronto, saving up enough of a down payment is usually the biggest barrier to homeownership. But the question that I continually ask my friend is this: Does a model like this actually end up hurting overall affordability by increasing people's buying power? Similar to what happens when interest rates go down. People can now afford more home.

Perhaps. But Ourboro’s roots are in social enterprise and their focus is on helping people who might not otherwise be able to buy a place. They also see their approach as addressing the " fundamental imbalance of housing supply and demand in Canada ." We know that more supply would help with affordability, but so does this I guess. And it's easier to implement.

I suppose another way to look at this model is that it's allowing individual homeowners to bring on co-investors, which is, of course, normal practice in the world of commercial real estate and development. Most developers don't have all the equity needed to finance their own projects. They raise it from outside investors (and prosper through the magic of carried interest ). Now end-users can do that too (but sorry, no carried interest per se).

So if you're in the market for a new home in the Greater Toronto Area and are looking for a little help with the down payment, Ourboro might be an option for you to consider.