Markham Buttonville Airport Redevelopment | ?m | 1s | Cadillac Fairview | Glenn Piotrowski Architect

I can broadly support this proposal.

However, I have to observe the following, I find the road alignment choices rather peculiar, and wonder if this is necessitated by having a specific client who requires a specific size/layout for one or more of the buildings.

Second, I would prefer to see the development in the north-east corner of the site, abutting a tributary of the Rouge River, be pulled back just a hair. It's running very close to stable top of bank.

I'd like to see a 30M strip of nature at the top if feasible.
 
Northern Light said:
I can broadly support this proposal.

However, I have to observe the following, I find the road alignment choices rather peculiar, and wonder if this is necessitated by having a specific client who requires a specific size/layout for one or more of the buildings.

Second, I would prefer to see the development in the north-east corner of the site, abutting a tributary of the Rouge River, be pulled back just a hair. Its running very close to stable top of bank.

I'd like to see a 30M strip of nature at the top if feasible.
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The connection to Renfrew Dr is for some reason a private street - only the Allstate Parkway extension and connection to 16th Avenue from Allstate is proposed to be public.

You do make a good point that this site is a unique property which may be a good location for a large industrial tenant, instead of a bunch of mid-sized warehouse buildings. It's not often you get a 170 acre site come up in the centre of a major metro area like this.

It's not enough for something like an Automotive plant, which generally requires 300-500 acres.. but it could still be useful for some other large scale use.
 
I think this shows you how much the market has changed - the initial proposal was definitely for commercial / residential - and while I'm sure they would still be able to make a significant amount on the residential side (though competing with Downtown Markham) the commercial market is essentially non-existent less custom builds (of course there are exceptions here or there) - whereas the industrial market has taken off.
 
innsertnamehere said:
This type of development is in super high demand right now. This was never a particularly good place for high density development in my opinion, and it's better here than on some farm fields in Caledon.
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I figured some office, commercial with condo density around a park honoring the airport. Would have been just as good in this location next to a highway instead of light industry. We do need housing more than ever today.
 
I could also see industrial being built now and a rezoning occurring 20+ years down the line with office, commercial and residential.
 
Considering it's right next to the 404, and surrounded by existing office/industrial uses, I would rather it be industrial/manufacturing space than an isolated high-rise village.

If there's any land in Markham that needs to be rezoned to higher density mixed use, there are plenty of better candidates - the auto shops and car dealerships at Steeles and Old Kennedy, and the industrial parks at Mount Joy GO being my preferred picks.

The continued scourge of private roads for multi-tenant properties doesn't sit well with me though.
 
Interesting stuff - surprised there's no attempt for even modest commercial along 16th Ave (given the 404 interchange).

Such is the demand for industrial land in London (and the challenges of that) - is that double stacked industrial units are being developed. Surely the demand for industrial land in the GTHA hasn't reached that level yet...
 
I like seeing more industrial, but I wonder if anything more creative could have been done- I.e. maybe introducing combined residential-light industrial on the edge of the site facing the Rouge River/16th Ave.

innsertnamehere said:
You do make a good point that this site is a unique property which may be a good location for a large industrial tenant, instead of a bunch of mid-sized warehouse buildings. It's not often you get a 170 acre site come up in the centre of a major metro area like this.

It's not enough for something like an Automotive plant, which generally requires 300-500 acres.. but it could still be useful for some other large scale use.
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Same here but I wonder if the risk and effort needed to line up such a tenant would be exponential compared to the current scheme, parts of which could even be built on spec with lower risk.
 
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jje1000 said:
I like seeing more industrial, but I wonder if anything more creative could have been done- I.e. maybe introducing combined residential-light industrial on the edge of the site facing the Rouge River/16th Ave.


Same here but I wonder if the risk and effort needed to line up such a tenant would be exponential compared to the current scheme, parts of which could even be built on spec with lower risk.
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Indeed this approach is lower risk - but from a higher level planning perspective it would probably be smart to try to hold the site for a large industrial tenant, which seems to have a surprisingly large number coming to the province right now.

Double stack warehouses aren’t a thing in Ontario yet really, other than Amazon’s 5-level warehouse in Barrhaven which is a bit of an outlier. I know there is at least one in Vancouver though.
 
If taller industrial park buildings aren't a thing yet they should be. Why not start with this circa 1960s Doug Ford Pave Ontario wet/fever dream/nightmare? A sensible government would start regulating this. At the very least mandate turning the roofs into solar farms.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Indeed this approach is lower risk - but from a higher level planning perspective it would probably be smart to try to hold the site for a large industrial tenant, which seems to have a surprisingly large number coming to the province right now.

Double stack warehouses aren’t a thing in Ontario yet really, other than Amazon’s 5-level warehouse in Barrhaven which is a bit of an outlier. I know there is at least one in Vancouver though.
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The Chad ATL Logistics Centre:


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9 million sf . It's the biggest building I've ever seen in person. Easily one of the largest buildings on the planet (Boeing's Everett facility, by contrast, is 'only' 4.3 million sf).
 
ProjectEnd said:
The Chad ATL Logistics Centre:


thumb_IMG_9904.webp


9 million sf . It's the biggest building I've ever seen in person. Easily one of the largest buildings on the planet (Boeing's Everett facility, by contrast, is 'only' 4.3 million sf).
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Some big boys, though not quite that scale, are going up in NYC right now:

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Of course, you don't need to cross the border to find some examples, or even leave Toronto! Keele Centre is a long standing multi-level warehouse:

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And of course there is Montreal's Avenue De Gaspe, which has long standing, massive warehouse buildings - they just aren't the kind of warehouse which would get built today..

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and Amazon's 2.8 million sf 5-level warehouse in Barrhaven:


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I think that in general electrification + economics + modern vehicular logistics has flattened out industrial architecture to typically single-storey structures, whereas industrial intensification is usually necessitated by a demand for proximity/siting that results in suboptimal sites being chosen for development (land values/constraints precluding large land assembly).

I.e. some new industrial complexes in New York City also stack commercial/office/studios/residential on top of logistics/light industrial.

The Borden Complex

A prime Long Island City location. A trailblazing design with revolutionary features. A purpose-built platform for next-level users.
bordencomplex.com bordencomplex.com

I'm not sure if there is enough land scarcity for higher-density industrial in Markham- I would imagine the Portlands would likely be a stronger candidate for these types of projects. And likewise, Amazon has its own internal specs that could optimise, whereas the Buttonville buildings seem to be more generalised for more potential tenants?

That being said, it would be cool if they did a mega- Keele Centre here and created a site plan with a double-decker site capacity (expandable if necessary). Something more ambitious than just another industrial park IMO.
 
north-of-anything said:
Considering it's right next to the 404, and surrounded by existing office/industrial uses, I would rather it be industrial/manufacturing space than an isolated high-rise village.

If there's any land in Markham that needs to be rezoned to higher density mixed use, there are plenty of better candidates - the auto shops and car dealerships at Steeles and Old Kennedy, and the industrial parks at Mount Joy GO being my preferred picks.
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I don't particularly disagree but it's not that isolated.. Being an airport it's obviously relatively isolated and the rest of the block is light industrial but there is residential (and a heritage district) just across the street. In that context, it doesn't seem absurd to do something with employment uses along the highway, transitioning to mixed use and residential to the north and east.
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On the one hand, given the recent discussions about employment conversions etc., it''s easy to see the positive side of a large-scale employment development in a core employment area. On the other hand, it's just off the rapid transit network and is likely to become yet another large industrial park that's busy 9-5 and abandoned the rest of the time. I can't help but think a better mix of uses would better serve Markham's larger evolution, even if the residential mix is on a lesser scale than Markham CEntre (and let's not forget Langstaff Gateway was supposed to be a major jobs centre, until the Province's EMZO gutted that.)

One of the main things isolating the site is the lack of a mid-block connection across the 404, the cost of which (IIRC) was one of the things that was contentious in the negotiations between the city and developers when the intiial proposal was made. I guess an industrial development can work better than mixed-use without it, but it would still help a lot.

At the end of the day, it's been in limbo for so long, it's good to see something resembling certainty, at least.
 
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