High-Rises to Reshape Vaughan Beyond Its Nascent Downtown

Urbantoronto.ca
March 30, 2017
By Jack Landau



Toronto's suburban satellite cities have-for years now-been aiming to build new downtowns for themselves, adding a high-rise skyline to our wide-open 905 landscapes. While Mississauga's skyline now even fools some visitors to Pearson into thinking that they're seeing Downtown Toronto on the horizon, other places like Markham are earlier in the game. With a new subway station opening at the end of the year, developers in Vaughan have started on a Downtown for that city too, or what they call the "Vaughan Metropolitan Centre".

That's not the only area of Vaughan getting new high-rise density, though. A few kilometres north, two multi-tower developments are aiming to reshape the blocks south of the Jane Street and Rutherford Road intersection. Together, these projects will bring a minimum of five high-rise condominium towers to the area (pending future phases), replacing former greenfield sites with a major infusion of density.

Just south of the Jane and Rutherford intersection, a large site on the east side of Jane Street is surrounded by hoarding bearing branding for Solmar Development Corporation's Park Avenue Place. The community's  three towers will all reach heights of 22 storeys, and feature a Postmodern-neo-Railway-Hotel influenced design by Graziani + Corazza Architects. Sales are well underway for the first two phases of this community-a nearby presentation centre is open north of Rutherford Road-while the early stages of excavation appear to be underway at the project site to the south.

Kitty corner from the Park Avenue Place site, the future site of Greenpark Homes' Charisma Condominiums sits waiting for future construction, fenced off with colourful hoarding advertising the 26- and 24-storey Kirkor Architects Planners-designed condominium towers. The once grassy expanse which separates Jane Street from the huge Vaughan Mills shopping centre has been cleared and graded in anticipation of its high-rise development.

On the south side of the site, a single-storey presentation centre is now nearly complete, as registration for the project continues.

As activity heats up in this part of Vaughan, the area immediately surrounding the future subway terminus to the south is witnessing a number of intensification projects. Just north of the Highway 7 and Jane Street intersection, excavation is well underway at the site of Plaza and Berkeley's The Met, a 35-storey, Quadrangle Architects-designed condominium development.

Southeast of The Met, Cortel Group's completed Expo City 1 & 2 led the early charge to develop Vaughan's Downtown, standing as the first condominium towers to be built near the new transit hub. The two AJ Tregebov Architect-designed 37-storey towers will soon be joined by third phase of Expo City: Nord East. This development will bring two additional towers to the community, featuring a simplified design that mirrors the massing of the first two phases.

Moving west away from Jane Street, the Gupta Group's Icona Condos will bring a pair of towers in the fifty-storey range to the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre. Further on, a major development is nearing structural completion on Highway 7 at Weston Road, just west of Highway 400. Liberty Development's Centro Square Condos & Shops is adding 30 and 33-storey condominium towers to the landscape, as well as a 10-storey office component. The Kirkor-designed development will be anchored to the Weston and Highway 7 intersection with ground floor retail frontages, helping to create a walkable street environment on a site previously occupied by a car dealership.

Additional information and renderings for both projects mentioned in this article can be found in the project dataBase files linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum threads, or leave a comment using the field provided at the bottom of this page.