#36

Coby Lefkowitz spoke at an event hosted by my friend Ben Parry this week. The talk was about building beautiful cities, and that building beautiful is a choice that is more accessible and affordable than many people might think. It focused a lot on getting foundations of urban design right, moreso even than the need for beautiful architecture. Those foundations are 1) narrow streets, 2) narrow lots, 3) mixed use as-of-right, and 4) plenty of greenery. If you get those foundations right, your city will probably be beautiful, even if the architecture is mid. If you don’t, your city probably won’t, even if the architecture is great. As a developer, I see this as both obviously true and discouraging, as those area all decisions to be made by elected officials and bureaucrats, and as such, outside of my control.

We have a 6-storey rental building proposal in Etobicoke on a street that currently features a very large 26 meter right-of-way. That right-of-way is planned for an expansion to 36 meters. As such, we have to convey almost 5 meters of our property for a future road widening. As beautiful and useful as our building will be, it will suffer from this decision for a worse, uglier urban environment.

We’re getting closer to getting some new projects under construction. I think that by the end of the year, we’ll have two or three, and will certainly have three by Q1 2026, including the one mentioned above. By Q3 2026, we should have five or six. This is great. As I’ve said before, everything other than construction (namely, entitlements) feels a bit fake. Aside from the satisfaction we get from material daily progress, being under construction also helps us update many of our underwriting assumptions on costs and timelines for future projects. You want those assumptions to be based on the most recent data possible, so you really don’t ever want to not have any projects under construction.

It also helps that we’re starting to see the best construction pricing we’ve seen in a few years. Most construction trades have very little work coming up and are often willing to bid on projects at cost, just to keep their people employed and around for when the market returns. A construction manager friend is convinced that 2025-2026 pricing is as good as it’s ever going to be again.

I’m going to be speaking at the Missing Middle Conference (not to be confused with my Missing Middle Summit) on September 12th at the Fairmont Royal York. You can check out the event details at themmc.ca, and if you’re interested in attending, save 10% on the ticket price by entering promo code ChrisSpoke10.

We’re looking to hire Marketing and Operations Coordinator, full time, to work out of our office in the Junction. If you or anyone you know might be interested, take a look at the job posting here and email me at chris@torontostandard.co .