Mississauga Plans for a Bold New Future
TORONTO SUN
Neil Sharma
Mississauga has long carried the unflattering mantle of Toronto's sprawling, unremarkable western suburb, but as one of Ontario's growth epicentres, that's about to change.
The Rogers family recent announcement to invest $1.5 billion into a downtown Mississauga development is a major part of that change.
Mississauga already has an alluring, yet rudimentary, skyline comprised of condos, but street-level activity is for the most part, scant. Not only will the 10 towers, the first of which will be marketed early next year, house 12 to 15,000 new residents, they will host ground-level entertainment amenities and inject new life into downtown Mississauga.
“As the market expands, the range of available entertainment uses and services that can flourish in that environment obviously improve, said Mark Reeve, Partner of Urban Capital Property Group, M City’s
developer.
“All you have to do is look at downtown Toronto with the advent of condos there — the base of services in Toronto have improved and that’s the future of higher density urban development in Mississauga. It can only result in great things, in better amenities, because the population base will be there to support it.”
Reeve added M City’s planned density will make Hurontario’s dedicated LRT more viable, and along with City Hall’s efforts to augment bus service, downtown Mississauga will finally start looking like the beating heart of a city of nearly 800,000 residents.
“That’s the nature of public infrastructure — it is supported by high density development, and that’s where you want to put the big buildings, next to the transit stations,” he said.
The first tower should be finished by 2021, and Reeve says it will be an iconic tower — as will the other nine — in the mould of the city’s award-winning Marilyn Monroe towers.
During planning, Urban Capital enlisted the help of revered New York City-based firm, Cooper Robertson, which specializes in large-scale urban development.
“First of all, you’ll see world-class architecture. We’re doing very exciting buildings,” continued Reeve.
“When we roll out first-phase details in a few months, we think everybody will be excited about it. It will be a gateway to the eastern towers, the Marilyn Monroe buildings, so this will create landmarks on the western side of downtown.
“We came up with a pretty spectacular community plan with a major contribution to open public space; the road pattern will be unconventional and will create an interesting pedestrian environment; and overall it will be different than a lot of things we’ve seen in Mississauga. We spent a lot of time addressing the public realm in terms of how the buildings come to grade (at street-level).”