MEET LOUIE SANTAGUIDA

L Luigi (Louie) Santaguida is a Canadian entrepreneur and community patron with strong ties to the City of Toronto. He has made it his goal to transform and revitalize communities throughout the GTA, in Ontario, and across Canada.

After graduating from high school with honours, Luigi enrolled in the Engineering program at Ryerson University. He was presented with the Ryerson Alumni Achievement Award in Engineering, Architecture & Science in 2010.

As the founder and CEO of Toronto-based condo development company Stanton Renaissance, Luigi started looking into alternative building techniques and technologies long before his counterparts. Far from a typical condo development company, Stanton’s specialty is the social, ecological, and financial revitalization of urban areas. Aside from their existing projects, the company is working on several other endeavours both within urban centres and rural communities, including the establishment of the very first clean, green urban village in Toronto’s Junction area.

In addition to his professional career, Luigi’s highest priorities in life are his wife MaryLou, his four children, and his involvement in his community!

GREEN INITIATIVES

Luigi (Louie) Santaguida was looking into alternative building techniques and technologies long before his counterparts, and long before it was trendy, or seemed crucial. The trailblazing Ontario developer is the founder and CEO of Toronto-based development company Stanton Renaissance. Santaguida has spoken out about the need for the development community in general to acknowledge and address the very legitimate concerns and demands of homeowners, renters and investors.

The beauty of Santaguida’s way of doing and seeing things is that in his version of building and living well, taking these concerns to heart is in no way a deprioritization of economic viability. Lower operating costs, cleaner living environments, and better design are all part of the full-package deal for residents of any of Stanton Renaissance’s impressive Visionization Green Initiative developments in the Toronto and Hamilton areas. Long gone are the days when developers can get away with placing “eco-friendly” and “profitable” in two separate, mutually exclusive boxes. Santaguida has quite literally raised the bar on responsible, conscious development.

Santaguida coined the term Visionization as shorthand for the natural evolution of human thinking, ultimately leading to human collaboration on an integrated level, as opposed to the commonly independent work of making community decisions. For instance, giving designers, marketers, engineers, architects, bureaucrats, and politicians all a seat at the community decision-making table from a project’s onset would likely bear a different outcome than a solo developer going head-to-head with the planning apartment at an OMB hearing.

With Santaguida’s leadership, Stanton Renaissance has pushed ahead to become a lot more than a southern Ontario development company. It is known for taking brownfield properties in dysfunctional areas and transforming them into practical, efficient, beautiful places to live, and optimizing their unrealized environmental, social and economic potential. Santaguida is committed to creating gorgeous, green, practical living spaces characterized by their energy self-sustainability and their close proximity to public transit, wherever possible. Santaguida has always had a passion for environmentally sound technologies, and to that end, continually improves upon his knowledge in the field. Stanton Renaissance is proud of its strong relationship with the most cutting edge green technologies out there. They’re the first developer in Canada to introduce a geo-exchange co-generation combination technology—incredibly effective at generating sustainable heating, cooling and all-around energy to fulfill the needs of those living in high-rise condos!

It’s not surprising that Santaguida received a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering at Ryerson University, or that he started his career in Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment. He devoted much of his early career to the revival of industrial sites and environmental renewal work. He was founder and partner in two different companies known for their development of effective turnkey solutions in the following areas: decommissioning, excavation, hazardous material management, and soil and groundwater remediation.