Toronto is the most competitive environment in the world to design and rezone a project. Planning and de- sign mistakes cannot be made or they could cost you the development. Good architects and consultants are difficult to find in a hyper crowded, busy landscape. As time is always of the essence in real estate, you will need to be a drill sergeant to get your consultants to focus. There will be many consultants, more than you can possibly imagine (architectural, mechanical, electri- cal, historic, archaeological, legal, planning, structural, soils, acoustical, energy modelling, landscape, interior designer, shoring, construction management, building code, wind study to name about half). Their focus on your project is hard to ensure. All are needed to con- tribute studies for a city planning application. This process is like herding cats and all of this will take far more time than you allocated. You will have to greatly exceed the existing zoning of the land and probably have to change its use. All the easy land has long been developed, so land today is going to be difficult to develop and a guaranteed fight with city planners, councillors, and rate payers. In most cities, your development would be welcome by all. In most cities, development is rare. Not in Toronto. The planning department in Toronto will not agree to any rea- sonable proposal. Don’t ever attempt to alter employ- ment land or “neighbourhood” designations. You will lose. If you go the route of working with the city plan- ners, your project will be marginalized and decimated by untalented hands that mostly failed in private industry. Their meddlings will make your project less good, more expensive to build, smaller in scale, and far less prof- itable than anticipated. Podiums and setbacks, setbacks and podiums, they are the only words in a planner’s vo- cabulary. Of course, most councillors just pander to rate payers. They actually have less vision than their short- sighted, selfish, NIMBY constituents. You will have to sell 65-75 per cent of the building to buyers, sight unseen, aware that they have a four-year wait ahead of them. This of course is one of the largest outlays of money they will ever make with less concrete information available to them than when buying a sand- wich. With much work and patience, you may prevail. You will likely experience a slowdown or even a reces- sion during the overall five-year development process. You will have to figure out how to beat it. Some projects will fail. The best ones won’t. You must get buyers to give you 15-20 per cent deposits, even though most con- dos are for first time buyers and they usually have a min- imal deposit of five per cent. You are selling in the most competitive environment in the free world. Everyone wants to buy at opening day VIP pricing, even one and a half years after you’ve opened your sales office. And of course, don’t sell to investors because your bank believes it is “too risky,” even though investors are, logically speaking, the most likely buyer of your product. Why? Move-up/move-down buyers don’t typically like to make decisions four years prior to their needs, and as I just stated, first-time buyers can only scratch together five per cent down which the funding bank won’t ap- prove as a sale. Most buyers believe they are more knowledgeable The Canadian Design and Construction Report — Spring 2014 – 5