ULI’s Spring Meeting in Toronto took place May 16-18. Here are observations from various sessions and conversations over the three days of events:
- Designers are looking at the wellness component of buildings since we spend 90% of our time indoors.
- Embodied carbon is another area of focus. While not easy and still early, a materials “circular economy” could form in the future, where supplies from one project are reused and retrofitted for another.
- The Healthy Building Network offers guidance to improve product health, materials, and social equity transparency.
- Rider Levett Bucknall tracks cranes across numerous North American cities and reports that Toronto has 238 total. That’s nearly as many as Boston, Calgary, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., combined.
- Canada and the U.S. had roughly the same total number of immigrants in 2022. However, the U.S. population is about 8.4x larger.
- The Fed made a bet several years ago that innovation would tame inflation in a low-interest rate policy environment. For many years, it worked.
- The world economy is changing from a globalization network to one of localization or glocalization.
Colliers Insight
Aaron Jodka
Office landlords are looking for new ways to generate income streams, from food and beverage to event or conference spaces.
- Office landlords are looking for new ways to generate income streams, from food and beverage to event or conference spaces.
- Typical multifamily properties use 33% more energy than single-family homes.
- Today’s capital markets environment is slowing down and, in many cases, stopping the energy efficiency/transformation of buildings.
- Green roofs and water harvesting technologies aim to prepare building owners for future cloud burst events — large rainfall in a short period.
- If retail is considered a means of distributing goods, similar to industrial, does this provide a buying opportunity for big-box/open-air retail centers?
