Townline’s ESG Journey

Reflections On Our Inaugural Report 

For over 40 years, the team at Townline has worked to deliver quality commercial and residential developments to our tenants and buyers. From humble beginnings as a single-family home developer to our expansion into multi-family and commercial development spaces, we have grown to include projects of all sorts in our portfolio. At the heart of everything we do is our drive to innovate and do right by our clients, stakeholders, and the planet. Decades of our business activities have been delivered through this lens, and this year we are excited to formalize operational measures with our inaugural ESG report, released in April of 2024.  

We know we don’t have all the answers, but what we do know is that we are keen to begin this journey of benchmarking and identifying our priorities in the ESG space, and evolving our operations with time. Come along with us as we endeavour to improve our business practices and measure our impact.  

Formalizing Environmental, Social and Governance Measures

By reviewing ESG performance, we can evaluate ourselves continuously and provide a transparent overview of our corporate initiatives for our current and future stakeholders. This is our opportunity to measure more than financial markers and do our part to combat climate change, promote the circular economy, drive functional social change, support purposeful careers, and be a model of responsible management. 

Passive House and Sustainability Specialist and ESG Project Lead Brett Sagert shares his take on tackling the report, “The ESG report is something that we’ve been working on for the past two years here at Townline. We’ve always been passionate about the environment, as well as social and corporate governance issues, but it’s one of those things that we’ve not been great at talking about. We wanted to find a way that would really connect with our stakeholders and show some of the different things we as a company are doing to separate ourselves from other developers.” 

Tangible Metrics for a High-Impact Industry  

At a high level and across sectors, environmental, social, and governance extends far and wide—into nearly every facet of the corporate landscape—and provides a holistic view of an organization’s performance against critical markers. Defining ESG in the development space is of utmost importance, given the inherent waste produced by construction efforts. In fact, global construction reportedly accounts for between 35 and 40% of total global emissions, with buildings accounting for 34% of global energy demand and 37% of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022 alone.   

Considering inputs like construction methods, future-proof designs and waste management strategies can help mitigate environmental impact during project lifecycles. Assessing employee work conditions, safety, well-being, community investment, and relationship building, and continuing to improve on these, will elevate the social metrics. Finally, a well-run business with measures to assess policy and stakeholder management performance help to round out a development industry ESG model. 

With these impactful markers in mind, ESG measurement helps development companies, in particular, track their goals and performance, ensure compliance as regulatory demands shift and evolve, and provide a transparent overview to partners so they know what kind of projects they’re backing. 

An Exploratory Process

While various national government bodies across the globe have mandated ESG reporting for corporations, Canada does not yet require report-outs. Our ambition to tackle ESG was not due to mandated reporting but instead was born out of a curiosity to establish a transparent baseline of operational impact. We aim to outline our priorities as an organization and to explore opportunities for growth – because we want to share what we’re all about with the world.

“We started to see more of our clients, partners and lenders asking about ESG. They were wondering what we were doing. We took it as an opportunity to say, hey, look, we see that this is coming down the road so we might as well start getting ahead of the curve. We began by understanding what we need to do in terms of benchmarking our overall impacts on the environment, society, and community, and look forward to using this opportunity to continue to better our company.” Brett shares.

2023 Report Highlights

“With our 2023 report, we really wanted to highlight our journey: where we’ve come from, as a single-family home builder to this multifaceted operation creating high-rise condos and various supportive housing projects.” Brett outlines, “Regarding the environment, plastic waste is the biggest marker because we know that we have a tangible impact and can make a significant difference. From the social side of things, caring about our employees’ health and safety is at the forefront, and supporting them in job satisfaction markers and overall positive company culture. Those are just some of the main highlights we’ve focused on in this year’s report.”

“I think our stakeholders were excited to see some of the things that they didn’t necessarily know we were doing on the regular. A big part of what we do is give back to the community with activities like our shoreline cleanup. We had employees say, ‘I didn’t even know that was a thing we do!’” Brett shares.

A comprehensive explanation of highlights from the three key themes captured in the 2023 ESG Report showcases a wide range of initiatives and benchmarks undertaken to date, highlighting how we like to do business and the causes that are close to our hearts.

For an in-depth breakdown of our 2023 accomplishments, read the complete report at https://www.townline.com/esg.

Learning As We Go

“This year, we were refining what’s important to us and where we can start progressing. We’ve already been working on many of these elements for years, like supporting various community events, but it’s something that we haven’t necessarily done a good job of talking about. We are thrilled to have this document to say, ‘This is our company in a nutshell. This is us being as open and transparent as possible.’ We understand there’s room to grow, but we’re starting our journey today, so come along with us.” Shares Brett.

“There’s definitely a lot that we’ve learned from doing this first report. At almost 70 pages, it’s a comprehensive document: we have covered so much, but these little bits and pieces are now available for us to expand upon in our future reports.” He explains, “It’s all a matter of looking at our overall corporate strategy and deciding what we want to focus on for the future, some of which we outline in the report under our strategic framework for 2024. As this market evolves within the North American landscape, we anticipate more developers will begin to track ESG. From there, we can pull themes that we see value in and track new metrics to expand our coverage.”

Townline’s ESG Future

Going forward, Townline intends to incorporate the publication of an annual ESG report into our strategic planning cycle. What can folks expect in the 2024 report? Continued self-reflection, trying to move the needle in an impactful way, and pivoting operations as needed to continue to align with our values.

Environmental goals will include expanding the plastic collection pilot program onsite, formalizing overall waste management practices onsite, and expanding the water bottle refill program.

Social impacts will include key areas of enhancement identified in our Employee Satisfaction Survey, as well as assessing opportunities to improve employee benefits.

In the governance space, Townline intends to explore incentive opportunities for management to incorporate ESG into project goals and to align our tracking with recognized global frameworks and standards, like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).

As we continue to explore and expand in the ESG space, we are eager to tackle increasingly ambitious goals in the next two to five years. With our inaugural report as our threshold for growth, we look forward to working with our stakeholders, clients, and colleagues in the development space to learn and grow together.