Magna selects King Township for new headquarters

YorkRegion.com
May 20, 2015
Tim Kelly  

Calling it the “best thing that’s ever happened to King,” Mayor Steve Pellegrini was in the mood to celebrate Magna International’s impending move to King Township.

Pellegrini, who said last Friday he has known the auto-parts giant was interested in coming to King since last July, termed Magna’s move “a great news story”.

Magna will locate its global corporate headquarters and research and development operations on 105 acres at King Road and Jane Street by the end of 2017. The move means 625 high-end jobs will be coming to King.

The corporation bought the land last November — as first revealed in the King Connection May 7 – and met with township officials to discuss a plan to rezone its land Tuesday.

The plan would see Magna build a 200,000-square-foot corporate office as well as underground parking.

Pellegrini has already viewed some architectural renderings of the buildings and is excited by what he has seen.

“It’s an incredible looking facility, which everybody would expect from somebody like Magna. They’ve always done that type of thing,” he said.

The move will take at least two years to complete but will mean operations will be affected throughout the rest of York Region, where the auto-parts corporation has offices.

All Magna would say last Friday was that it was on the move.

“We have been exploring the concept of relocating all of our Magna Global & Canadian family corporate and group office operations under one roof,” said Tracy Fuerst, Magna International’s director of corporate communications and media relations.

Most impacted will be Aurora, where more than 400 Magna employees work at the Magna Drive office.

On Tuesday, Aurora Mayor Geoff Dawe admitted he would be disappointed to see one of the town’s most significant employers leave in a couple years.

“We’re sad to see them go, but we’re pleased to see them staying in York Region. Magna has always been an extremely strong supporter of the communities that they’re in and I don’t see that changing,” said Dawe.

The mayor said the town is now taking its time looking for another tenant for the leased headquarters building.

“Our economic advisory committee is already looking at finding another tenant. We will be doing whatever we can from a town perspective to get people to come even up here and look at it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Newmarket Mayor Tony Van Bynen says he is not worried about the potential loss of jobs in the municipality because the office is staying relatively close.

“The borders between (municipalities) are becoming more invisible. It sounds like they’ve got a great location and we wouldn’t be able to offer that type of a land mass. It’s good they continue to have their primary focus in York Region. Organizations like Magna have a much broader scope of influence, as far as economic value goes. You’re still going to have people who continue to live and shop in Newmarket,”  Van Bynen said.

Pellegrini said that Magna’s coming to the township now puts “King on the map. Everything we’ve done has gotten us to this readiness state. Magna uses Kingbridge Centre quite regularly for meetings; Vianet has now run fibre straight up Jane Street from Vaughan to Sudbury for Wifi access. We have water and sewer lines moved out there for them. In terms of transportation, we have the 400, a new on-off ramp. We’re local to Toronto for calling with the 416 area code and the airport is right around the corner.”

The mayor said he believes that King Township has or will have by the end of 2017, everything Magna needs to be successful.

“Things are happening. Soon, you will see an application for an extremely high-end steak house; we will be ready when they’re ready – we have until 2017,” he added.

And he said Magna will be looking to bring in other businesses to fill up the 105 acres it purchased to partner with it.

“They will be masters of their destiny.”