Title:
Founder & CEO, Arlington Street Investments (ASI)
Organization’s Mission:
“Everything I want to do, not just business, and not just within the organization, is really about being inspired,” Lonardelli says. “And, over the span of time, now that I’ve turned 50, I realize that I want to gauge my life’s work, my projects, my vocation, who I spend time with, against the ability to create massive, positive impact.”
Recent Project:
Lonardelli supports an initiative to close off a five-block stretch of 17th Avenue S.W. to cars in the summer months. “It promotes the area. It creates community. It creates a connective tissue around what a cool city Calgary is,” he says.
Impact Highlight:
ASI’s complex and audacious 17th Avenue Urban Master Plan required purchasing 42 separate “off-market” buildings to create eight new development sites, and will dramatically transform and densify the corridor.
Vision for Calgary:
“A city where people come with great ambitions to create great things, where hard work and merit are rewarded and ambition and audacity are applauded,” Lonardelli says.
Frank Lonardelli believes in thinking long-term when it comes to transforming Calgary’s urban landscape. “You should be taking a 100-year approach to real estate, because that’s how long these buildings are going to last for,” he says. “If you take a myopic and short-term view on real estate development, you shouldn’t be in the business. Those who don’t have a long-term approach tend not to consider the legacy of their assets and their impact on the community over the years.”
More than nine years ago, the founder and CEO of Arlington Street Investments (ASI) and his team set out with “no money, no assets, no people, just an audacious plan” to develop 17th Avenue S.W. Essentially, Lonardelli and ASI have done what seemed from the outside to be impossible — envisioned and then built a master-planned inner-city streetscape in an existing area. And he’s done it primarily through the forcefulness of his own vision, the ability to make others see what only he saw, and the commitment of his team.
“It started with fascination around what we didn’t have in the city, which was a cool corridor where people can live, work, play and shop,” Lonardelli says. “We didn’t want to just build buildings; we wanted to build ecosystems. Real estate is an instrument, not an endgame.”
The execution of ASI’s transformational “Live, Work, Play and Shop” urban master plan for 17th Avenue S.W. will be complete within the next two years, Lonardelli says. To do it, ASI purchased 42 existing buildings, none of which were for sale, to create eight “individually curated, thoughtful, architecturally designed buildings that would consider the history of those assets and their geography,” Lonardelli says.
The National on 17th, on the corner of 17th Avenue and 5th Street S.W., next door to the iconic Ship & Anchor pub, was the first project ASI completed. The building is also home to ASI’s head office. Next came The Fifth, which is directly across the street to the west. The five-storey mixed-use development hosts 52 residential units and 12,000 square feet of commercial retail space.
Enzo, Francesco, Sentinel, High Street and Scotia Block and an eighth project currently in the works round out the plan. Between them, Arlington will build more than 700 apartments and 60,000 square feet of retail space with 27 separate retailers on 17th Avenue S.W.
While the project has helped grow ASI’s real estate portfolio to well over $1 billion, Lonardelli is just as proud of the legacy it has created for Calgary, particularly the opportunity it creates for future generations.
“Cities need to create environments where young people can take risks, fail forward and still feel like they belong,” he says. “Every development project should ask, ‘How does this make people’s lives more meaningful, more connected, more possible?’ Each development should inspire people to ask themselves, “What could I do if I gave myself permission to do so?’”
