Tall & Urban News

Anticipated for many years, Oxford Properties, along with Alberta pension fund AIMCo, announced The Square One District, a multi-decade project that will develop the sea of parking and open lots surrounding a 1972-built mall in Mississauga. The developer, who has recently built Toronto's EY Tower, New York's Hudson Yards, and has plans for a CAD$3.5 billion (US$2.6 billion) mixed-use complex adjacent to Toronto’s Rogers Centre, is going all-in on Downtown Mississauga with a 37-tower mixed-use development set to define the area for decades to come.

Four years after the plan for Toronto’s East Harbour project originally surfaced, its status as Canada’s largest proposed development has already been overtaken. With a record previously set at 12 million square feet (1.1 million square meters) by the aforementioned project, The Square One District will see 18 million square feet (1.6 million square meters) of space built on 130 acres (52 hectares) of currently under-utilized land. The project will house the new office buildings, 18,000 residential units, and new retail and entertainment spaces; all anchored by the existing mall complex.

Bound by Highway 403, Burnhamthorpe Road, Confederation Parkway, and City Centre Drive, the project is master-planned by Hariri Pontarini Architects, a firm that is currently working on similar projects like the Galleria Mall Redevelopment and the Choice REIT project at Dundas West Station.

At the center of district is a space called The Strand, envisioned as the anchor of pedestrian activity within the city. The space would feature street-level retail, walkable parks, public art, and a transit hub that would connect to the future Hurontario LRT and local MiWay bus service. The LRT itself is set to begin construction this year.

Often with these large-scale projects (especially in a Toronto context), renderings and site plans are available years before they have made it through the planning process. In this case, Oxford has already received approval for phase one of the project, a pair of IBI Architects-designed residential towers anchoring the northwest corner of the new district. Being brought to market in partnership with The Daniels Corporation, the towers will rise 36 and 48 stories, rising from a shared podium. Known as The Condominiums and Rental Residences at Square One District, the buildings will house a collective 977 units. The building would feature 8,400 square feet (780 square meters) of ancillary retail at grade. This specific pair of towers will begin sales as early as April 2020, and will break ground for construction this Summer. Tentative occupancy for the first phase is set for 2024.

An additional 5,000 residential units are scheduled to launch in the next five to seven years. Notably, the entire district will see over half of its residential units configured with a purpose-built rental tenure, hoping to ease the extremely tight 1.5 percent rental vacancy rate.

The marketing of the project’s first office tower to prospective tenants is set to begin as soon as Q2 2020.

Mississauga mayor, Bonnie Crombie, remarked that the Square One District project would help the city shed its suburb status to become a true world-class city. The mayor touted that the city is well on track to see a population of 900,000 by 2041, at which point it would be home to over 550,000 jobs. “Mississauga is actually a net-importer of jobs as of right now, meaning that more people come to work in Mississauga than leave to find employment elsewhere” Crombie added. The office space included would help see the growth of the downtown workforce, which currently hovers around 24,000.

The new district will be the final lynchpin in the creation of Mississauga’s downtown, which has been under-construction over the past several decades as high-rise condominium towers have continually been added to the Toronto suburb’s skyline. With construction and sales well under way for mega projects like Roger’s M City and Camrost-Felcorp’s Exchange District, the time was ripe for Oxford to step in and complete the urbanization process.

Although not announced at the press conference, Oxford took steps last week to advance a subsequent phase of the project located towards the southern end of the district. The building, which is currently known as Block 22, would be located directly east of the 72-story tower at Exchange District. Submitted for Rezoning as a pair of Hariri Pontarini-designed condominium towers rising 55 and 65-stories, the towers would house 1,216 residential units. Although not specified in documents supplied by the City of Mississauga, the units will likely be mixed between condominiums and purpose-built rentals. Just like the first phase, Block 22 will include an extensive retail component, spanning over the first floor of the seven-story podium.

For more on this story go to Urban Toronto.