Mississauga : Development News

There’s a renaissance of sorts going on at Pearson airport.

It has nothing to do with the American-style security, unfortunately, and a reasonable way of getting there is still several years away, but there are 13 new restaurants opening up, and that’s something.

What’s more, unlike the current crop of food outlets, the sort that give airport food a bad name (ugly, bad food, high prices, poor service), the new ones designed by New York firm Icrave won’t be ugly.

Also, there are iPads.

The first of these, Heirloom, a bakery-based restaurant, has just opened in the international departures section of Terminal 1. There will be 12 more, opening in both terminals, in space once given to departure gate seating. None of the old outlets is closing, yet.

"Typically now, if you want to go to the airport, go through your hour and a half security, and you have a choice: you can go to a restaurant, go to a newsstand, go pick up a $10 yogurt or whatever and go to your gate and wait for your flight," says Icrave principal Siobhan Barry.

But with Icrave’s modern design, not only will there be more places to eat and drink, the way passengers spend their time waiting for their flights will also be changed, adhering instead to the customs of the contemporary passenger. 

"The actual gatehold seating is where the biggest change is," Barry says. "It’s now a seat with a table, with an outlet to charge your devices, and an iPad for your use."

Each seat by the newly equipped departure gates will have a leashed iPad, which you can use to browse, but also to order meals from any of the nearby food outlets. To sign in, you’ll enter your flight number, and it will let you know if you have time to eat or drink before you have to board your flight. It will cut off ordering 15 minutes before boarding.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Siobhan Barry

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Pinnacle International has begun work on their master-planned community in northern Mississauga.

Pinnacle Uptown is being built on 37 acres of farmland, incorporating 14 acres of parkland and the Cooksville Creek into its plan.

"It's pretty exciting for us," says Anson Kwok, the Toronto VP of sales and marketing for the Vancouver-based developer, which is also in negotiations to buy the parking lot attached to 1 Yonge Street for a reported quarter billion dollars.

Once complete, Pinnacle Uptown will add 2,500 residential units, high-rise and low-rise, to Mississauga’s north end at Hurontario and Eglinton.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Anson Kwok

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As part of a $190-million investment, Roche Canada will be renovating its Mississauga campus to accommodate as many as 200 new employees.

"It's re-purposing the existing facilities," says Roche spokesman Mike Vesik. "We don't have enough room to build up on the property. We're taking a section of our warehouse to accommodate the new positions."

Vesik said renovations, which were to include new infrastructure and amenities such as a cafeteria, were going to begin immediately.

The $190-million, which includes $7.79 million from Ontario's Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, will make the Mississauga campus into what Roche is calling a "global site for pharmaceutical development."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Mike Vesik

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to bert@yongestreetmedia.ca.

There's a new kind of low-cost house in the GTA, thanks to Habitat for Humanity and Daniels.

Daniels -- which has worked with Habitat before, giving the housing alternative organization a packet of land around Islington and Lakeshore a little more than three years ago -- donated a constructed but unfinished house in their new FirstHome development at 3050 Erin Centre Blvd.

Habitat for Humanity's Mississauga branch then rustled up 3,312 hours of volunteer labour to finish the interior, before it was sold to a family of six whose income, which is below the designated poverty line of $50,000 for that size of family, at market value, but with no money down and an interest-free mortgage.

Doug Clark, president and chairman of the board for Habitat for Humanity Mississauga, hopes that the Daniels gift will serve as an example to other developers.

"Maybe one of the reasons there hasn't been more of this thing happening previously is that there's sort of a stigma attached to affordable housing," Clark says. "With this project, we've amply demonstrated that that stigma is not deserved. We've got a project where there's a habitat home that's going to be within an existing community and four months from now, people will drive down the street and they won't know which one's the Habitat home."

The house will be ready for its new owners by September.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Doug Clark

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to bert@yongestreetmedia.ca.

For the developer, there are downsides to building things before people commit to buying them. For buyers, there are downsides to buying things before they're built. But Daniels Corporation seems to have hit upon a formula that works for everyone with its First Home brand of developments.

Daniels builds entire projects of townhouses, stacked townhouses and 4-storey low-rise condos, all aimed at first-time buyers and let the success of one project do the advertising for the next, and do no actual marketing for the developments before every house is completely built and ready to move into.

Their latest, phase two of Destination Drive at Erin Centre Blvd. and Winston Churchill Blvd., consists of 148 units on 10 acres. Construction started in March, 2010 and finished, with the exception of the landscaping, last week. And the day before they went on sale, Daniels reported buyers lined up to get the pick of the litter.

"We've had this repeated over several communities," says Daniels vice president Don Pugh. "Because we build first, it gives us the ability to market them in a very special way."

This special marketing includes the ability to give potential buyers walk-throughs, not only of model homes, but of their actual potential home, and down the streets where Daniels hopes they'll live.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Don Pugh

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to bert@yongestreetmedia.ca.

Mississauga is where it's at these days.

In addition to being home of the most talked-about condo design in the GTA – the Absolute tower, also known as Marilyn – Mississauga was the site of last quarter's largest commercial real estate transaction, and this quarter's largest residential land deal.

According to Realnet, in the last quarter of 2010, Cadillac Fairview sold Erin Mills mall to the Ontario Pension Board for $370 million.

"Those types of things are very rare," says Realnet president George Carras, "so when they come to market, there's a fair bit of interest."

Carras says that the sale shifted the entire balance of commercial versus residential land transactions in the GTA as, to a lesser extent, has the more recent sale of just under 57 acres north of Eglinton and west of Winston Churchill to Argo Developments, which plans to build low-rise residences. That sale was worth $68.1 million. It was enough to allow Realnet to title the announcement of its latest report "Residential Land Investments Lead the GTA Investment Market in Q1 2011."

"The overarching trend here is people want hard assets in the GTA," Carras says. "They want into the property markets. You're seeing the volumes coming back. The fact that you're seeing a resurgence in residential, that's where the market is right now."

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: George Carras

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The last of four towers that helped transform Mississauga's city centre got one of its finishing touches this month.

Onyx, the fourth tower by Davies Smith Developments, across from Square One, got its rooftop terrace. Though it's been accepting occupants since last summer, the 36-storey, 353-unit building at 223 Webb Drive has only now reached is registration phase.

"When we started the ball rolling on this whole community, we put a lot of thought into the kind of style for the first building coming in there," says developer Ian Smith, "because that was very early in what has now become a well developed residential core in the city. We saw it not as a suburban site, but as Mississauga city centre, which could be pretty urban.

"So we went with a pretty sleek glass tower design, which hadn't been done there before. Before, it was very traditional suburban condo designs, more individual, punch windows, facades with individual windows breaking up the exterior. At that time, nothing in Mississauga city centre had lofts, two-storey units, and they sold incredibly fast."

The first designs for the four-tower project, which also includes CityGate I and II, and Solstice, were done in 2002, just after the zoning for the area had been changed to allow the increased density, according to Smith.

The towers' architect was Roland Rom Colthoff, current principal at Raw Design, who was a principal of Quadrangle Architects while designing the first three towers; the credit for Onyx is split between the two firms.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Ian Smith

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to bert@yongestreetmedia.ca.

CORRECTION: Raw Design was incorrectly credited as the architecture firm behind the four towers in the original version of this story. Roland Rom Colthoff was the principal in charge of these designs while at Quadrangle.

Highway 27 was shut down for the last three days, ending this morning, to allow six enormous vats destined for Molson Coors' Carlingview Drive brewery to be delivered from the Port of Hamilton.

At 40,000 kg, 8 metres high and 7 metres in diameter, the vats are meant to increase the brewery's production capacity, according to Gord Gilchrist, project manager for Mammoet, the heavy transportation company responsible for the transfer.

"This is probably one of the smallest things we'll move this year," Gilchrist says, explaining his company generally hauls transformers, generators and petrochemical equipment, often having to plot routes that avoid bridges when loads are too heavy for them to support.

No such measures had to be taken this time. "These things are really small," Gilchrist says with a chortle. But they did have a police escort, and in addition to Highway 27, Disco Road, Attwell Drive, Belfield Road, Farnboro Road and Dixon Road all had to be closed at various times during the last three nights.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gord Gilchrist

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The walls have gone up on Toronto's second Whole Foods. It's being built in a section of the old Wal-Mart parking lot at Square One in Mississauga, and this week, the ceilings, which are also mostly up, will be joined to the walls in time, Whole Foods' Toronto man hopes, to beat most of the winter's snows.

"We're going full-tilt ahead," says Peter Hilge, Metro store team leader. "We're working 24 hours a day on that site."

The 40,000 square foot store -- the same size as the current flagship shop in Yorkville's Hazelton Lanes -- is being built as a separate structure on the Square One property, designed by Petroff.

The store will include all the regular Whole Foods amenities, but will also be adding more windows to the back rooms, so people can see what's going on.

"One of the things a lot of people don't understand is a lot of the things are done from scratch in each store," Hilge says. "We want the people to be more a part of what we're doing in Square One."

The opening date for the store has been set for July 28, 2011.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Hilge

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Thanks to some federal stimulus funding, the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto is getting a new $70-million building.

Built on a former parking lot on the west-end campus, the 150,000 square foot Instruction Centre will include new lecture rooms and larger spaces for such things as exam-writing and other mass gatherings. The building was designed by Shore, Tillbe Perkins and Will.

The design includes distinctive copper cladding for the building, which will appear to be constructed out of stacked blocks. According to the architects, the building is intended to "frame a new entry plaza at the north end of the campus" and create a "new hub of student life."

Work began on the project in March of 2009 and according to Nadeem Shabbar, the university's chief real estate officer, it's one of the few large recipients of the stimulus funding that is expected to be completed in time for the program's stated March 31, 2011 deadline.

This is the second large commission on the UTM campus for the architecture firm, which also designed the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre and Library, a 98,000 square foot, four-storey building completed in 2006.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Nadeem Shabbar

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Mississauga is getting its biggest LCBO next week, a 16,000 square foot location with 11,000 square feet of selling space at Eglinton and Glen Erin Drive at the Erin Mills Town Centre.

"Mississauga is a growing area," says LCBO spokesman Chris Layton. "We're trying to go to more freestanding locations with better visibility. It affords more space, an adequate levels of parking, And in the case of Eglinton, we expect quite a bit of walk-in traffic."

The store will have 3,000 different products for sale, including 800 under the Vintages rubric.

The latest of a string of large-format stores to go up around the GTA, the Mississauga location has cost about $1.4 million to construct.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton


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A unique building at Pearson airport, which started out as a simple utilitarian project to train its own staff and ended up a dynamic for-profit institute run by the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, has won a 2010 Ontario Architects Association award for design excellence.

Designed by Kleinfeldt Mychajlowycz Architects Incorporated, which was previously cited by the OAA for their own offices at 147 Portland St., the Fire and Emergency Training Services Institute trains fire and emergency personnel in its classrooms, using such facilities as a burn building and a rescue tower.

If the project receives the LEED Silver certification it's aiming for with its passive solar collection panels and reduced energy and water consumption, it will be the airport's first LEED building.

"It exceeded forecasts in regard to recovered solar energy," says project manager Gerald Lambers.

Construction on the 25,000 square foot, $13.5-million building began in November, 2005 and was completed in January, 2007. The prize will be awarded next month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gerald Lambers

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Part of what seems from the outside to be a perpetual expansion of Starbucksian proportions, Shoppers Drug Mart is opening a larger location in Port Credit, a relocation from a smaller store in a strip mall just east of the new Lakeshore and Pine location.

"What we're doing in many cases," says Tammy Smitham, Director of Communication and Corporate Affairs for the company, "is to take our smaller format stores that have potential to be large format, and put them into larger spaces, more than 14,000 square feet of selling space, which allows us to offer the latest in what Shoppers Drug Mart has become well known for."

In this case, the associate owner, Gus Falameh -- each Shoppers Drug Mart is individually owned -- will remain the owner of the larger space, which in addition to doubling the floor space will employ all its former employees and possibly add several more.

The full size of the new location, which had its distinctive red panels up as of last week, will be 17,500 square feet including storage and back rooms.

The store is due to open at the end of April.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tammy Smitham

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or renovating, even a cool new house in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to bert@yongestreetmedia.ca.

The University of Toronto will get its first suburban medical training facility next year, a $37-million health sciences complex on the school's rapidly expanding Mississauga campus.

Built on a little less than half of an existing above-ground parking lot, the 5,960 square metre (60,000 square feet) building will house the Mississauga Academy of Medicine, which will be the academic base for 216 medical students while they complete their clinical training, mostly at the nearby Trillium Health Centre and Credit Valley Hospital.

The province contributed $15.6 million to the project, designed by Kongats Architects, which the university expects will reach full capacity by 2014.

"The St. George campus has limited ability to expand," says UTM's chief administrative officer, Paul Donoghue, explaining the decision to extend the university's medical faculty to what was for years considered a satellite campus, but which is now gaining a centrality of its own.

The building will also house the  biomedical communications program, which trains students to be medical illustrators and animators.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Donoghue

The University of Toronto's Mississauga campus is getting a $70-million, 13,000 square metre (140,000 square feet) classroom block. Work is well underway for the project, which broke ground in October, and will ultimately house 27 new teaching spaces, from a 500-seat lecture theatre to 30-seat seminar rooms.

"We're just busting at the seams," says UTM's chief administrative officer Paul Donoghue, using a phrase common among staff at the rapidly expanding university. Donoghue says that 10 years ago, when the university established its master plan, UTM had about 5,000 students.

"We're now at 11,500," he says, growth he ascribes to the changing demography of Ontario and the GTA.

The Instructional Centre is being built on what was a 300-space parking lot, a space designated for development in the master plan. Once completed, UTM will be adding some accessible parking spots near the building.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Donoghue