Development and planning in Mississauga - reinventing suburbia

NRU
Oct. 11, 2017
By Dominik Matusik

Mississauga is no longer experiencing the kind of explosive residential growth that characterized its development over the past three decades. Instead, planners are getting creative in the face of issues associated with a maturing city: intensification, higher-order transit, and attracting office development.

"We're done growing," chief building official Ezio Savini told NRU. "Now the creativity happens... The developments that we have now are creative, are unusual, [they] make you really want to sit up and say 'that's cool', rather than just another 200 acres of houses going in."

Planning and building commissioner Ed Sajecki told NRU that Mississauga has historically been a sprawling, car-dependent city that is now reinventing itself.

"We developed around the automobile," Sajecki says. "And we have been the fastest growing city in the country, but largely with cookie-cutter subdivisions. This really is about reinventing suburbia ... Mississauga is increasingly the poster child of how to do that."

TRANSIT

One way Mississauga is maturing is through the imminent arrival of higher order transit, with the Hurontario LRT.

"The Hurontario light rail project is due to start construction next year, and will be fully open by 2022," Sajecki says. "And that's a game changer. It's a game changer for us because it really is part of a much larger regional network. What that line does, is it connects many GO stations, most of which are mobility hubs."

Additionally, Mississauga's east-west rapid transit is also expanding. An extension of the BRT transitway along the 403 corridor will be fully open by the end of the year and BRT will also run along Dundas Street in the future.

WATERFRONT

Much of Mississauga's intensification is happening along its waterfront. Currently, there are two large redevelopment projects in the works: Inspiration Lakeview and Inspiration Port Credit, both mixed-use redevelopments of former industrial sites.

"We've been working on [Inspiration Lakeview] for a number of years," Sajecki says. "And a lot of the work began when the provincial government decided [it] would close a major power plant, the Lakeview Generation Station... It's a huge opportunity right now and it's got some adjoining property as well, which is up for redevelopment, which means we're at over 300 acres of prime real estate on the waterfront. So we're at a point now where we went through a very lengthy community exercise, the site is master planned for a community of about 20,000 people, it will be very much a mixed-use community."

Additionally, there are three large sites in Port Credit, including the former site of the Imperial Oil refinery, which now have master plans in place.

"If you get the bones right, everything else falls into place," Sajecki says. "When I talk about the bones, that's your street system, that's your transportation, transit. Those are your sidewalks. All that kind of hard infrastructure, parks and open space. So we've spent a lot of time on that. Recognizing that the lakefront is very special. These are legacy sites for future generations which will shape the city for a long time to come ... We're very fortunate. We've looked around the world at successful, and not so successful, waterfront developments ... and I really do think we've nailed it."

DOWNTOWN

The area of Mississauga that has perhaps undergone the most significant change is downtown. Projects such as Celebration Square, the Living Arts Centre, and the Hazel McCallion Campus of Sheridan College have transformed the downtown and given residents a reason other than the Square One shopping mall to visit and linger in the city's core.

"If you had come [to downtown Mississauga] 10 or 15 years ago, most of what you see probably wasn't here," Sajecki says. "It's been developing so rapidly into a major urban growth centre... What you see around [downtown Mississauga] now, which is pretty impressive, that's just the beginning. Just with what's already been approved, you can just close your eyes and double what you see out there."

However, recently big box style development has emerged downtown, adjacent to the MiWay transit hub. Considered by developers to be temporary and disposable, staff views it as undesirable. This led to council adopting an interim control by-law in 2011 to freeze all new development.

Recently, staff has struggled to attract office space downtown. Mississauga's office development is still concentrated in car-oriented business parks, particularly those surrounding the airport, which provide free parking and lower cost leases for tenants than those downtown. In 2016, there was a 61 per cent increase in employment in business parks as compared to only 20 per cent in downtown.

City planning strategies director Andrew Whittemore told NRU that planners will have to incentivize employers to attract them downtown.

"What Mississauga is really facing from a planning perspective is that the narrative has had to change," he says. "This is about a creative kind of new approach to planning and city-building. No longer is it 'they will come'. We have to start looking at innovative tools to attract office development in our downtown through financial incentives and partnerships."

These tools were approved by council in July through a Community Improvement Plan but have yet to be implemented as the plan is under appeal at the Ontario Municipal Board.

EMPLOYMENT

In total, 58 per cent of development in Mississauga in 2016 was non-residential, making the city a net employer, and growing. Over the 2011-2016 census period, employment in Mississauga grew by 3.9 per cent, compared to population growth of only 1.1 per cent.

"Mississauga has always had a strong economic base," Sajecki says. "Largely developed around the automobile... We have 450,000 jobs in this city, which is powerful when you put that together with the three quarters of a million people we have...That is one big, powerful city. But the challenge is, [it's] not well-served by transit. And going forward, for example around the airport, there's a lot of opportunity for intensification and infill around transit. But if we don't get transit right, we're going to lose a huge opportunity."

Part of this intensification is will occur through revitalizing business and industrial parks. For instance, staff developed a master plan for the Sheridan Park Corporate Centre, located just north of the QEW between Winston Churchill Boulevard and Erin Mills Parkway, with the aim of improving its connectivity, creating a more attractive streetscape, and encouraging a greater mix of uses and amenities.

"The value of land in Mississauga, has gone up exponentially," Whittemore says. "So development is expensive here. And the product they're providing is expensive. That's our reality, it's the province's reality. How do we still achieve all these great things that we want from a city-fantastic urban design, parkland, open space- knowing how costly all of this is? So we have to really try to figure out new ways of doing business."