Storeys
Large-scale mixed-use projects are springing up across the GTA and making enormous contributions to new urban centres in a single footprint. In some cases, they are the centre themselves, aiming to compete with some of Toronto’s oldest neighbourhoods for vibrant communities, cultural draws, and urban lifestyles.
City of Vaughan
Now a decade into its evolution, Vaughan’s downtown core is rising with key city-building projects in the works, public engagement opportunities underway and community amenities opening for use. The goal for the VMC is to develop a world-class city that encompass good urban design and public spaces that foster community well-being.
To help guide growth, communicate initiatives and ensure municipal policies and planning requirements are met, the City of Vaughan’s VMC Sub-Committee held a meeting earlier this week.
RENX
While hybrid work models gain traction as the preferred option post-pandemic, a new challenge is emerging. Employees who moved to the suburbs will be hesitant to make the long commute downtown, even if it’s only two or three times a week. In order to retain their talent, employers who aren’t able to offer fully remote work schedules may need to set up a satellite office or relocate to be closer to them. This imminent reckoning has led many to see the suburban office market in a new light.
Investor Review
It’s been interesting and exciting to see the VMC, a new downtown neighbourhood in its early growth stage, push through a pandemic. Aside from a paralyzing 2nd Quarter in 2020, it seems the VMC real estate business has come back and picked up its pace.
Vaughan Citizen
Citizens are called to bring their perspective through a survey that’s open until June 30 as Vaughan formulates a master plan for its emerging downtown core’s parks and wayfinding.
The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Parks and Wayfinding Master Plan is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2022. It will “guide the development of parks and open space, in addition to creating a signage strategy to make the area easier to navigate.”
Storeys
Indeed, in a place where not long ago, farmland, few residents, and (eventually) big-box stores reigned supreme, the city’s evolution is now in full swing. Towers — residential and commercial alike — are rising up in the city’s future central business district, bringing to the area transformation and, with it, an earnest sense of renewal.
Storeys
City building is in full-force in Vaughan’s emerging downtown core, with residential and commercial towers rapidly coming to life in the suburban city’s future central business district. The result will mark an extraordinary transformation for the area — one that moves well beyond a bedroom community of big-box stores, low density, and vacant land that characterized it for years.
Storeys
Some might even say that after a full year of COVID-related lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, the collective craving for a… festival, of sorts, has never been so strong.
Perhaps it was, in-part, this desire — this innate longing for joy and connection — that saw Phase One of Menkes‘ and QuadReal‘s new condo development in Vaughan, aptly titled Festival, named Canada’s top-selling project last year.
YorkRegion.com
Up to 63,350 residents in almost 32,000 residential units are expected to move into Vaughan’s emerging downtown core by 2031.
This according to the city on Wednesday, March 3, a day after it held the first subcommittee meeting for what’s known as the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC).
Urban Toronto
SmartCentres’ shift from large retail centres to mixed-use, high-density developments can be seen clearly in the redevelopment of a section of the block that formerly housed the Walmart at 101 Edgeley Boulevard into a new four-building complex being developed by SmartLiving, SmartCentres’ residential sub-brand.
Urban Toronto
Submitted to the City of Vaughan late last year, the plan seeks to build out the site at 175 Millway Avenue with a residential tower, a Class-A office tower, and a hotel.
Paula Bustard, SmartCentres’ EVP of Development, describes the mixed uses on the block as “a microcosm of what we’re trying to achieve across our entire 100-acre SmartVMC community.”
Press Release
Festival, Menkes Developments’ latest joint venture with QuadReal Property Group was the best-selling new condominium project in Canada for 2020.
Menkes and QuadReal launched the first two towers of Festival, with 1325 units, in fall 2020 and sold out the buildings in less than four months. Construction on the towers is anticipated to commence in the first half of 2021 and the sales launch for Phase 2 of Festival (Towers 3 and 4) is also targeted for Spring 2021.
Toronto Star
Vaughan, Oakville, Mississauga and Thornhill all saw substantial sales from both investors and buyers who plan to occupy their units. Those submarkets offer “a significant discount relative to downtown Toronto,” he said. Transit such as the Vaughan subway and the coming Hurontario LRT are adding to the appeal.
YorkRegion.com
Vaughan saw the sales of 3,160 condo units and 1,003 single-homes for 2020, the year when the whole world scrambled to fight off COVID-19 and continued pushing for more vaccine production, the Building Industry and Land Development Association figures showed Jan. 27
Vaughan by far outperformed its figures for 2019 where it also took the lead in selling the most condominiums and single-family homes in York Region.
Investor Review
It’s a marvelous experience to see a new downtown emerging during one’s lifetime, and the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) near Jane and Hwy 7 is exactly that.
Press Release
The Centre provides an end-to-end digital trust framework to help organizations innovate, experience, and operate across the threat management lifecycle.
Within the Centre is the Digital Resilience Sandbox, an immersive lab where clients can see, touch and experience the latest technologies, such as industrial systems, robotics, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and mixed reality, and simulate offensive and defensive tactics on them.
Retail Insider
SmartVMC, the massive 100-acre development at the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre located at Highways 7 and 400 near Toronto, is the crown jewel of SmartCentres REIT’s evolution ‘from shopping centres to city centres’.
Urban Toronto
Residents of the former Village of Edgeley—established in the early 1800s at the intersection of Jane Street and Highway 7 in present-day Vaughan—would be awestruck at what their quaint village has become. Vaughan officially transitioned from Town to City status almost 30 years ago, and a tidal wave of change has followed.
RENX
Sales launched in September and are going well for the Festival condominium by QuadReal and Menkes, the second component of their ambitious plan for the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC).
City of Vaughan
The City of Vaughan, in collaboration with Menkes Developments Ltd. and QuadReal Property Group, has unveiled a temporary public art installation prominently situated along Highway 7, leading into the heart of what will soon become Vaughan’s cultural and entertainment hub – the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC).
Urban Toronto
South VMC’s first project will add four towers to Vaughan’s burgeoning skyline. The mixed-use Festival Condominiums complex from Menkes Developments and QuadReal Property Group will boast fraternal quadruplet towers designed IBI Group, the first two of which are set to reach heights of 48 and 59 storeys, with 1,300 units total.
Toronto Sun
Pandemic or not, the area is growing faster than expected.
The creation of a vibrant downtown core from scratch is not an easy feat. It takes imagination, good planning principles and in the case of Vaughan, the opening of the first subway line to cross the 416-905 threshold three years ago.
Toronto Star
The people are coming. Just north of the Vaughan IKEA store near Highway 407 and Highway 400, the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) is finally being prepared for widescale human occupation.
Daily Hive
Menkes Developments is currently selling Festival, which is on the south side of Highway 7 and directly across from the new transit hub that includes a TTC subway station. This new development is part of a 75-acre site that will eventually include 25 condo towers plus townhomes and “all the ingredients to establish this as a cultural destination in Vaughan.”
The first phase of the project — two of the four towers — will be complete in 2024.