Transit City Video Interview – TalkCondo Discuss Transit City with Shamez Virani

• Amit Bhandari from TalkCondo interviews Shamez Virani (President of CentreCourt Developments ahead of the VIP Launch of Transit City Condos
• Virani discusses the history of CentreCourt Developments and what helps them stand ahead of other builders in Toronto
• How the new Downtown Vaughan is going through a major shift huge growth spurt
• How the new Vaughan Subway has been the catalyst for incredible growth in Vaughan
• What will make Transit City stand out ahead of the other condominiums in Vaughan
• The importance of the Buca Restaurant occupying the lobby space at Transit City and what that says about the future of Vaughan
• Why the partnership with the YMCA will give residents of Transit City access to World Class amenities
• How buyers will be able to secure VIP suites with TalkCondo

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Who is Shamez Virani?

Shamez Virani is the President of CentreCourt Developments, one of Toronto’s most forward thinking and exciting new condo developers.  Under Shamez’ guidance, CentreCourt have successfully launched and sold out some of Toronto’s most sought after new condo projects, including Peter Street Condos, Karma Condos, Indx Condos, Grid Condos and more.

Amit & Roy Bhandari of TalkCondo are thrilled to have a great relationship with CentreCourt and have sold condos at every single CentreCourt project where our clients have earned amazing returns.  We are always excited to bring front of line access to CentreCourt condominium projects.

Transcript:

Amit Bhandari: Hi there, this is Amit Bhandari of talkcondo.com. Today we are at CentreCourt development’s HQ. We are with Shamez Virani who is the president of CentreCourt’s development. Thank you so [00:00:30] much for allowing us to speak with you. I know you’ve got a crazy, crazy schedule.

Shamez Virani: Thanks for having me.

Amit Bhandari: All right so Shamez, I wanted to talk to you about a few things today, a lot of ground to cover. First is about CentreCourt’s development themselves in a relatively short period of time, a lot of things that you guys have achieved. After that, I’d like to just in a nutshell, just get a perspective on how CentreCourt pick and choose their sites, and then slowly transition to Vaughan, Vaughan VMC and [00:01:00] after that Transit City and what Transit City is all about and what that means to Vaughan.

Shamez Virani: Sure. That is a lot to cover.

Amit Bhandari: I know it is.

Shamez Virani: All right.

Amit Bhandari: But even before all that, I’d like to get to know you a bit more.

Shamez Virani: Sure.

Amit Bhandari: Obviously we worked for a number of years together, but your background, your story and how you got into the real estate development world, and how you ended up at CentreCourt development.

Shamez Virani: So, my story in a nutshell, that I’ll try to keep as condensed as possible given the number of things you want to cover today, [00:01:30] is I’ve had an undergrad and a graduate degree in business. I started my early part of my career in finance and investment banking. Ended up moving back home.

I’m born and raised in Calgary, moving back home to Calgary to join my family business, which was a real estate business that was really started by my mother who saved and scrapped and ended up having a few investment properties. Her and I went into business together at the time where the market in Calgary in 2009, 2010, when the market there really [00:02:00] had a real cratering because of the financial crisis, the oil markets collapsing. Then I got to a point where I said, the market here was kind of slowed down on development, but I knew I loved it even though that the market didn’t reward us for it so to speak. So then decided it was the right time to go and do my MBA and move to New York and studied at Columbia, and did my MBA focused on real estate.

I graduated from that program about six years ago. At the time I graduated, I was considering Toronto as one of the places [00:02:30] I might live. As a part of the process I met with a number of developers in Toronto, and met with my now business partner Andrew Hoffman who had just left a large real estate organization to found CentreCourt. With the specific vision of doing high-density high-rise condos, specifically in the downtown core, doing it with a lean team and really trying to execute at a level that out-performed our competition in the market. I really liked a lot of the things he said when I originally met him. We decided that we’d try to figure out an opportunity to work [00:03:00] together. That was back six years ago when we launched Peter Street Condos.

And like you said, a lot of top-end in our short history, we’ve completed now 2,000 units, all of them in terms of outcomes for all partners all the way from the consultants to the city to the residents who live in the building to most importantly the investors who purchased units in the building who we view as partners in our project. They all have done exceptionally well.

I think the rents that they’re driving, things like that I think that there’s been really positive [00:03:30] outcomes on our beginning. I call it the beginning, because I think kind of our first six years is really setting us up for the next 60 or 100 as we try to plan our business. It’s a really exciting time for our company. We’re still in a very rapid pace of growth. We continue to want to grab more market share and do great developments that really build our presence and importance and involvement in Toronto residential [00:04:00] market.

Amit Bhandari: Amazing. Such big fans of CentreCourt. Talking about CentreCourt specifically, killer sites. Absolutely killer sites. You mentioned Peter Street Condos, Index Condos, Karma Condos, Axis, Core. How do you pick these sites?

Shamez Virani: I’ll give a lot of credit Andrew, who does most of the heavy lifting on the front end of having relations with people who own land, having good relationships with the brokers who are active in [00:04:30] the market, knocking on doors, that sort of thing. You know, we started with a very simple philosophy, which was we wanted to develop in very dense environments that had great transit infrastructure and great amenities.

That was it. So we kind of really have a simple philosophy that that’s where we want our developments to be. In reality ultimately it’s a very active market. The land owners in the city are smart, sophisticated people so if you want to be in that space that we wanted to, and for the longest time prior to Transit City, we [00:05:00] were really within that sort of defined downtown area. So, part of it is working really hard, part of it is being willing to spend the money that it costs to acquire such properties. Ultimately at the end of the day, we’ve always had sort of a very positive outlook on how the city is evolving and how the city is developing, and have a very optimistic view as to where condo’s pricing will move in the future or the long run.

That sort of underlies our ability to be able to be active in the market and acquire great sites [00:05:30] and develop some very meaningful, large-scale projects.

Amit Bhandari: Awesome. So I mean, the general path then has been exactly what you said, high density areas, close to high speed transit, or transit in Toronto. But now essentially the next big one, a lot of huge development essentially, is outside of Toronto. So, Vaughan. Talk to us about that. What drew you to Vaughan? Talk to us a little bit about how that came about.

Shamez Virani: Yeah, that was again, [00:06:00] through Andrew who had a relationship or had known Mitchel Goldheart of SmartCentres. SmartCentres owns 100 acres that are 100 of the 400 acres of the Vaughan Metropolitan Center master plan. In my humble opinion, the most important 100 acres because it’s where the transit infrastructure, where the subway actually is located.

Transit City is right next to that subway location. So, what really drew us is when we heard about the opportunity and when we got [00:06:30] to know the team at SmartREIT, and understand their vision for the 100 acres that’s called SmartCentres Place of which Transit City is a part of, when we understood their vision for what they were planning to do there … listen, I’d be the first to tell you, I used to make the joke that I get a nosebleed when I go north of [Lore 00:06:48]. We were very focused on downtown, but when we heard the vision of what’s happening at SmartCentres Place and the nine acre park, and the quality of pedestrian experience that will be better [00:07:00] than any part of the city.

What’s really happened here is there’s 100 acres where there’s a very passionate individual, and a passionate organization about turning that into truly the next downtown in the GTA, and making it the best downtown in the GTA, and really spending on the infrastructure that’s required, building buildings of a very nice quality, materiality, architecture, design, but more importantly getting the pedestrian experience right.

Amit Bhandari: Usable space.

Shamez Virani: And when you hear the SmartREIT team talk about it, they’ve spent a decade thinking [00:07:30] about this and planning this out and getting the best consultants and thinking through hundreds if not thousands of iterations. As people see when we unfold the marketing campaign in more details on Transit City, what I think people will be most excited to see, and which is what I was most excited to see is that this is the first residential building, but it is part of such a broad amazing master plan vision. That vision in today’s market in the need for housing in Toronto, that vision I believe is going to realized a lot sooner [00:08:00] than some may predict.

It started really about two years ago, approximately, maybe it was a year ago, the completion of the KPMG building that’s very close to Transit City’s site. That was SmartREIT’s first project as a part of the 100 acre master plan.

Amit Bhandari: That’s really just south of the [crosstalk 00:08:17].

Shamez Virani: Yeah. It’s probably 200 meters away from the entrance of Transit City. It’s very close.

Amit Bhandari: Yeah.

Shamez Virani: It’s also very close to the subway entrance. That building, if you see it in the sort of skyline of Vaughan, you realize that that’s the highest [00:08:30] quality building that’s ever been built in Vaughan, and it’s the highest quality building that’s, quite frankly probably been built outside of downtown Toronto. It brings that quality and outlook and aesthetic and quality materiality to that project.

It is remarkable. It won very important award recently at the NAIOP Rex awards, which is in the office market sign of really the market understanding that they had done something special. We’re hoping to do a lot of the things that the SmartREIT team did right on [00:09:00] that building, and translate it into Transit City, which is an incredible development that I think is going to really put the VMC and SmartCentres Place on the map from a residential standpoint.

Amit Bhandari: Amazing. I mean, just working in this industry as real estate professionals, we always speak about how cities develop. We always speak about the past of how it used to be, how it was primarily focused on industrial uses. You’re seeing that today, [00:09:30] but the amazing thing is, is that we’re going to be witnessing an entire development of a downtown city, which is incredible. This is the kind of thing that we geek out about.

Shamez Virani: Yeah. Me too.

Amit Bhandari: The development of an urban center essentially. Can you talk a bit more about the VMC in terms of its vision? A little bit more.

Shamez Virani: Yeah, I can speak maybe a little more specifically about the 100 acres of SmartCentres Place.

Amit Bhandari: Beyond the park, because I understand there’s a lot more ground level retail [00:10:00] that-

Shamez Virani: There is a … and like it said, it’s been decades in the making, but there’s constant tweaks and evolution to it. I would say the central competent starts with what’s currently being called the Central Park, but I think may change in time. That park, a nine acre park, to take essentially 10% of your land, of your very valuable land and to turn it into a park. It’s not just a park, it’s of the level and standard that we haven’t seen in Toronto [00:10:30] before, that most publicly funded parks could never achieve because quite frankly, the cost of the design, of the infrastructure, of the quality of construction. I wouldn’t do it justice to speak to the programming of it, but … and it’ll all be a part of the package that we put together. But essentially, it’s a park that would rival any of the best parks in the world, would rival a Central Park in terms of different components within the park, not just open spaces but also programmed environments for different things, concerts, venues, some water areas, [00:11:00] things like that that really will make it an unbelievable feature. Everything starts in a sense with that Central Park from a, I guess, livability, urban environment standpoint.

From a density standpoint, everything starts with the transit infrastructure. So, just to touch on that quite quickly, it’s the last stop on the TTC subway line, or maybe the first stop depending on how you want to look at it.

Amit Bhandari: Exactly.

Shamez Virani: From someone who wants to get a seat on the train, on the subway it’s the first stop. [00:11:30] It’s got a York Regional bus terminal that’s immediately adjacent to Transit City. If you look at the images, you’ll see it’s right nextdoor. It’s a terminal that’s going to have transit infrastructure to all areas of the York region. You’ve got the Viva Network going along highway seven, and then you’ve got the 400 at your doorstep. Thinking about the name Transit City, really what immediately struck our mind and our psyche was that there is nowhere [00:12:00] outside of really Union Station in downtown Toronto that has this transit infrastructure. This amount of all levels of government, municipal, provincial and federal, the TTC, the York Regional Transit System, Viva all have come together, and basically invested in the land immediately adjacent and right in the stone’s throw from Transit City.

We thought to ourselves, what’s really unique about this location is you’ve got [00:12:30] … if you look in the GTA, if you zoom out … when I zoomed out from my downtown Toronto map and kind of went to a broader GTA map, Vaughan surprisingly, it was surprisingly to me, but now quite informatively sits at the center of the GTA. Whatever part of the GTA, like Mississauga to Brampton to New Market to downtown, if you looked at all that, it’s actually dead center. Then you’ve got the subway taking you south to … the transit infrastructure taking you east and west [00:13:00] and north. Our tagline for the project is 43 minutes to everywhere. There’s nowhere in this city, whether you want to go to Pearson or whether you want to go down to ACC for a game, or whether you want to go visit friends in Brampton, or whether you want to go up to New Market or whatever, you can get everywhere in the city in 43 minutes. I don’t know that there’s another location in the city that can actually say that if you take a broader GTA perspective.

Amit Bhandari: There’s actually one other thing. The bus terminal, the connection to the subway as well. There will be a direct connect-

Shamez Virani: So, Transit [00:13:30] City, like I mentioned, is immediately adjacent to the York Regional Bus Terminal, which is a beautifully designed bus terminal that again, speaks to the quality of the broader vision. The bus terminal and the subway terminal, the architecture of them are of the quality you see in European cities. Like much better than the stuff you see in downtown Toronto, quite frankly and elevating it to the next level. But, as a part of that York Regional bus terminal, which is immediately again, probably a 50 meter walk from the entrance of Transit City. [00:14:00] You’d be able to enter and access the entrance to the subway, so there’s an underground connection from the bus terminal to the subway. In the colder months, I imagine residents of Transit City will just walk across and go down and they’d be right in the subway.

Amit Bhandari: So I’d like to speak to you about the building specifically. I know there was quite a big deal with [Bucca 00:14:22] and the lobby being a five star lobby. Could you speak to us about that?

Shamez Virani: Yeah, it started really with an [00:14:30] idea and a conversation we were having internally about how do we make buildings, have amenities that actually matter. When we say they matter, they impact the quality of life of their residents, they lead to higher values for owners, they lead to higher rents for investors, things that actually residents of the building say, “I live at Transit City because of this aspect of the building.” That really differentiates off and adds value to their life and to their experience.
In thinking about that, we sort of thought to ourselves, “Well what are [00:15:00] the amenities we see in buildings generally that really draw value to people?” One of the concepts was the hotel lobby. You know, and there’s a number of projects even in the city of Toronto, or around the world that are hotel and condo components where the lobby is like a hotel five star luxury lobby.

We thought if we can bring that experience into Transit City Condo building, we would really elevate the lobby experience of a building. In this environment where you’re [00:15:30] right next to all the transit infrastructure, we anticipate that the majority of our owners will not own vehicles and will be commuting by all the transit infrastructure that’s right there. As a result, they’ll be walking in and out of their building every day through the lobby.

We had the idea, because of Transit City’s location in Vaughan and the rich Italian heritage there in terms of the quality of some of the food experiences there and the appreciation for that sort of cuisine, and thinking about in our view, [00:16:00] in our collective view it was a partnership, the best Italian operator in the entire city who really elevates, in my experience … Buca is my favourite restaurant in the city, one of my favourite restaurants in the world, and Bar Buca and Buca in Yorkville, all their … you know there are three concepts downtown or places that I think are reminiscent of going to a five star luxury experience in the dining setting.

We were very fortunate to be able to strike a partnership and an affiliation with Buca where they’re going to [00:16:30] have a Buca restaurant operating in the lobby of the building, and they’re also going to be operating in the lobby of the condo component which is going to be reminiscent of a lounge environment that you see in five star hotel lobbies in Toronto. Think, the Shangri La, the Four Seasons, the Ritz. Those quality of experience in terms of aesthetic, build out, design, and it will be operating from morning until night. In the morning they’re going to serve coffee and pastries and all these beautiful [00:17:00] Italian words that I don’t know.[crosstalk 00:17:03], but that I eat all the time that are incredible. Followed by a food service and a drink service and a lounge service throughout the day.

If I’m a resident of Transit City, I’m using it in the morning, getting my coffee in and out probably getting a pastry here or there. If I come home during the day, at any point it’s an environment where I can open up my laptop, working, get some stuff done, grab a coffee, grab maybe an early drink something like that, or grab a small snack. Then in the evening, it’s a place I can invite [00:17:30] friends. We can get together in my lobby, and we’re going to have an amazing meal. We’re going to have a drink. It’s going to be in the setting that’s just literally downstairs. It’s an extension, as we think about it, of the living room within a suite, and it becomes the living room for the building.

For those that live in these sorts of buildings, there’s few of them and they’re very luxury oriented, they all experience that there’s a communal aspect of that lobby environment that becomes kind of an extension of their home.

Amit Bhandari: And then once they’re done eating, they [00:18:00] can go to the YMCA.

Shamez Virani: Yes, yeah.

Amit Bhandari: To work out.

Shamez Virani: Yeah, so this is the other really exciting thing. Again, right next to Transit City is a brand new mixed use building, a true mixed use building with Price Water, Coopers, PWC the accounting firm is the lead anchor tenant, but in that building there’s also a 100,000 square foot YMCA, state-of-the-art, brand new facility and a daycare and a 10,000 square foot library. That’s going to be in a building that’s starting construction [00:18:30] any week now that will be completed by the time Transit City is completed.

Amit Bhandari: 2020 I believe, right?

Shamez Virani: Yeah, I think that that’s the timeline for the building. So when we looked at that and we saw we are immediately nextdoor to this 100,000 square foot, multi-million dollar investment, into this environment with a pool, with a basketball court, with a state-of-the-art gym facility, with like I said the daycare, all these components. We have potentially the single best set of fitness and life amenities [00:19:00] right next door. When we kind of identified that, we thought we should figure out an affiliation with the YMCA whereby all of our owners and residents of Transit City would have a membership to the YMCA included in their unit essentially, that would be long term duration arrangement.
We have fortunately come to that arrangement with the YMCA, and I think-

Amit Bhandari: That’s amazing.

Shamez Virani: One of the first of its kind that I’m aware of where we’re really going to be sharing, as we share the [00:19:30] details of Transit City, sharing the details of this YMCA facility that’s going to be a tremendous asset to everyone that lives in the building.

Amit Bhandari: It’s amazing. So you get fantastic food, an amazing environment to work out [crosstalk 00:19:43]

Shamez Virani: Yeah, you eat all the food and drink the wine in the lounge and then you work it off in the YMCA. That’s going to be one of our marketing [crosstalk 00:19:50]

Amit Bhandari: Amazing. And then head downtown, grab a subway, go downtown.

Shamez Virani: Yeah, you know go to the Raptors game, Leaf’s game whatever you want.

Amit Bhandari: Can you tell us a little bit more about … within the building itself, suite [00:20:00] mix, that kind of thing, suite sizes, you know. I understand there is going to be a bigger emphasis on largest [crosstalk 00:20:06]

Shamez Virani: So we, as we always do, we start really planning our building and its design from the inside out. We want to understand sort of what’s the need for unit type in that particular location, what are owners, and investors, and end users looking for in terms of lifestyle, and where’s the market need really, essentially. We studied this [00:20:30] market in quite a bit of detail. Although we’re taking a lot of our downtown focused development approach to the VMC to Transit City, we do also have to be mindful of what the area and people in the area want. We realized that that area likes a little bit more space, or is willing to pay and is willing to sort of … is desiring some more space in their suite.

In doing that, we’ve actually increased the typical suite size from our downtown product by about 15 square … 15%, excuse me. 15 [00:21:00] square feet wouldn’t be that much. We’re going to have a real focus on two bedroom units, livable two bedroom units, two bedroom plus den, and we actually have a three bedroom. The majority, the vast majority are going to be that suite mix, which you know you could probably speak to even a little bit better than I, but is certainly where today’s market is looking for in terms of unit mix. It’s kind of gone a bit of a 180 from only five years ago when everyone was looking for small studios. Now, I think the market has naturally evolved and realized [00:21:30] these condo units are also going to have to play a role in being replacement for ground oriented residential, which is no longer affordable.
Amit Bhandari: Wonderful. So, is there anything that I’ve missed that you would’ve liked for me to have asked?

Shamez Virani: Just I guess next steps, timing for the project.

Amit Bhandari: Sure.

Shamez Virani: So, we’re going to work with a handful of individuals including yourself, and your brother to bring the project to market. We’re working with Cornerstone, and they’re going to have a very key role obviously, Shab [00:22:00] and Johnson in sort of getting the project to market. In the next couple of weeks we’re going to be releasing a lot of exciting information.

Amit Bhandari: Amazing.

Shamez Virani: And gearing up for a launch very shortly. Yeah, this spring.

Amit Bhandari: Fantastic.

Shamez Virani: So stay tuned and we hope that the market will be as excited about the project as we are. Our early indications are it should be another sort of overwhelming success.

Amit Bhandari: Absolutely. We’re really, really excited about it. Thank you so much for this.

Shamez Virani: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Amit Bhandari: Thank [00:22:30] you.