Mississauga Square One District | ?m | 65s | Oxford Properties | Hariri Pontarini

[Northern Light]

Ok so you can only build a certain height if you have an office component in the podium or wherever. It’s the same results. Everything being proposed is 50 floors. If just five floors of each building is office that’s a huge amount of space.

That they may be able to get; TBD, have to see where the market is in a few years.

Lower podium offices also don't tend to attract large tenants, and corporate HQ/Regional offices, they tend to get doctor's offices and smaller businesses. Nothing wrong w/that at all btw; but important to know what market your aiming at.

 

[sixrings]

That they may be able to get; TBD, have to see where the market is in a few years.

Lower podium offices also don't tend to attract large tenants, and corporate HQ/Regional offices, they tend to get doctor's offices and smaller businesses. Nothing wrong w/that at all btw; but important to know what market your aiming at.

Exchange towers has an office component.

 

[Mercenary]

This area needs high order transit other wise it will be total gridlock.

1 - They need to extend the Subway from Kipling to here
2 - They need to add a GO Train Station from the Milton Line to have a stop here or even a Spur that goes from Erindale
3 - They need to extend the Eglinton LRT to intersect with Hurontario

Even 2150 Lake Shore is getting a Go Train Station at Park Lawn.

 

[Tuscani01]

This area needs high order transit other wise it will be total gridlock.

1 - They need to extend the Subway from Kipling to here
2 - They need to add a GO Train Station from the Milton Line to have a stop here or even a Spur that goes from Erindale
3 - They need to extend the Eglinton LRT to intersect with Hurontario

Even 2150 Lake Shore is getting a Go Train Station at Park Lawn.

Re: 3 - there’s a nearly brand new BRT already doing exactly that.

 

[ProjectEnd]

Didnt Oxford give the land to the city to build a library, a city hall, and a performance arts centre. Is there no possibility that something like this can happen again. Surely the city has some sort of leverage of what can be built on the site. Ok we will approve this many floors here (more than usual) but we need over here to be offices.

They did not. Bruce McLaughlin was the one who, along with his friend Boss McCallion, moved Mississauga's nucleus from Port Credit to the Square One area. As you note, this was partially done with a lot of gifted land for the City Hall and central library. The Living Arts Centre came later - it was probably also on McLaughlin land, but I can't speak authoritatively to that plot. Maybe someone else can fill in that blank? @interchange42 or @Northern Light, perhaps?

Ok so you can only build a certain height if you have an office component in the podium or wherever. It’s the same results. Everything being proposed is 50 floors. If just five floors of each building is office that’s a huge amount of space.

Mississauga has no height cap in the Square One area. The only thing limiting height there is a given developer's proforma.

 

[sixrings]

They did not. Bruce McLaughlin was the one who, along with his friend Boss McCallion, moved Mississauga's nucleus from Port Credit to the Square One area. As you note, this was partially done with a lot of gifted land for the City Hall and central library. The Living Arts Centre came later - it was probably also on McLaughlin land, but I can't speak authoritatively to that plot. Maybe someone else can fill in that blank? @interchange42 or @Northern Light, perhaps?

Mississauga has no height cap in the Square One area. The only thing limiting height there is a given developer's proforma.

Could they not add a height cap without office provisions.

 

[afransen]

MCC is not going to be a desirable office market because transit connectivity is so poor.

 

[interchange42]

Could they not add a height cap without office provisions.

This project is long term, it will take Oxford decades to build it out. Office work time has fundamentally changed owing to COVID, and there is plenty of time and land around MCC to see how things shake out over the coming years. Even the post by @Lake Ontario that triggered this avalanche of replies (@ProjectEnd, sorry, no, I don't know about the previous land ownership) shows that Oxford, for the moment anyway, is not asking to remove office zoning from the bulk of the Rathburn District. Here's that map again;

If they get permission to build mixed-use on the pink blocks, they will take at least a half dozen years to realize… and there will still be 7 more blocks with 2 potential office towers each to build out. For any of them to happen though, will take a major return to the office to occur over the coming years. If that major return doesn't happen, the currently existing and UC office stock around Square One will likely be able to handle the area's needs for the foreseeable future.

42

 

[sixrings]

MCC is not going to be a desirable office market because transit connectivity is so poor.

It will have a lrt and thousands of people who could walk to work. You’re against a subway extension so are you just giving up on offices in Mississauga. I love the optimism out here.

 

[afransen]

It will have a lrt and thousands of people who could walk to work. You’re against a subway extension so are you just giving up on offices in Mississauga. I love the optimism out here.

No one is going to trundle along on Line 2 for an hour to work at MCC--and any folks who would will soon have a Dundas BRT that can even actually go to MCC. Regional connectivity is poor because Milton Line does not have 2WAD/frequent service (even if it did, Cooksville is 2 km away from MCC), HuLRT is not extended to Kitchener Line, and it will still take 20 minutes to get from Port Credit GO to MCC on the HuLRT.

MCC is just very difficult to serve with good transit. It really is the wrong place for downtown Mississauga to have been built. I fear it will be doomed to be a condo ghetto around a shopping mall. We might have a better chance developing office uses along Hurontario between 403 and Cooksville/Dundas, as it will at least be directly served by HuLRT and somewhat easy transfers from 403 transitway, Dundas BRT, and Lakeshore W GO. All the office we're talking about in this thread next to the 403 is going to be heavily auto-dependent, and that typology is more appealingly located on the 401 (the huge corporate node between Meadowvale and the Airport).

I think only downtown Toronto will ever be able to rely on having a lot of people walk to work for office uses. And that only works because downtown has good transit connections (if there is a partner in the family that works somewhere other than MCC).

 

[ProjectEnd]

It will have a lrt and thousands of people who could walk to work. You’re against a subway extension so are you just giving up on offices in Mississauga. I love the optimism out here.

It's not that anyone isn't 'optimistic', there just a required does of realism there too. It doesn't cost any less to build an office building in Mississauga, but the rents could be between a third to half as much as in Toronto and the prospective tenant base is far less as well. So why would you?

 

[Northern Light]

It will have a lrt and thousands of people who could walk to work. You’re against a subway extension so are you just giving up on offices in Mississauga. I love the optimism out here.

It's not that anyone isn't 'optimistic', there just a required does of realism there too. It doesn't cost any less to build an office building in Mississauga, but the rents could be between a third to half as much as in Toronto and the prospective tenant base is far less as well. So why would you?

Essentially I'm with both @afransen and @ProjectEnd here.

The issue is not that there will never be more office space in MCC. In point of fact, I would go so far as to call that likely.

It's that it will be less substantial than many envision/hope; and that it will not be soon.

***

Absent a serious plan to shift GO Milton to the north to serve MCC, and I'm unaware of any such plan even at the remotest inkling stage among public officials, any new office space of significance in Mississauga with a transit orientation is more likely to be situated adjacent to Port Credit GO, or possibly Cooksville, if/when it gets 2-way, all-day service of at least 30M frequency, 15M in rush hours.

I would argue the target markets would be:

Relocation of regional HQs already based in Mississauga but further from transit; and possibly research-related facilities for Trillium health.

A Line 2 extension will likely happen, but it will be a very long time, if ever, before it reaches MCC. A debate about the merits of that simply isn't relevant right now, because it's just not on the horizon through the mid 2040s.

 

[afransen]

Absent a serious plan to shift GO Milton to the north to serve MCC, and I'm unaware of any such plan even at the remotest inkling stage among public officials, any new office space of significance in Mississauga with a transit orientation is more likely to be situated adjacent to Port Credit GO, or possibly Cooksville, if/when it gets 2-way, all-day service of at least 30M frequency, 15M in rush hours.

I would argue the target markets would be:

Relocation of regional HQs already based in Mississauga but further from transit; and possibly research-related facilities for Trillium health.

And because the thinking in Mississauga political/planning circles is that downtown Mississauga is Square One, and 'neighbourhood character' of most other areas is to be preserved, there would be a lot of resistance to significant density around Port Credit GO. There are huge battles over intensification in Port Credit, and we have a sea of SFHs north of Port Credit GO that would have been a more logical location for the forest of towers currently rising around Sq One.

 

[sixrings]

Essentially I'm with both @afransen and @ProjectEnd here.

The issue is not that there will never be more office space in MCC. In point of fact, I would go so far as to call that likely.

It's that it will be less substantial than many envision/hope; and that it will not be soon.

***

Absent a serious plan to shift GO Milton to the north to serve MCC, and I'm unaware of any such plan even at the remotest inkling stage among public officials, any new office space of significance in Mississauga with a transit orientation is more likely to be situated adjacent to Port Credit GO, or possibly Cooksville, if/when it gets 2-way, all-day service of at least 30M frequency, 15M in rush hours.

I would argue the target markets would be:

Relocation of regional HQs already based in Mississauga but further from transit; and possibly research-related facilities for Trillium health.

A Line 2 extension will likely happen, but it will be a very long time, if ever, before it reaches MCC. A debate about the merits of that simply isn't relevant right now, because it's just not on the horizon through the mid 2040s.

How can an office building be built at port credit if the NIMBYs can’t let a 30 floor condo go up. Office floors are much larger than traditional residential floor so I don’t know how anything of substance can be built there.

 

[sixrings]

It's not that anyone isn't 'optimistic', there just a required does of realism there too. It doesn't cost any less to build an office building in Mississauga, but the rents could be between a third to half as much as in Toronto and the prospective tenant base is far less as well. So why would you?

The build cost might not change but the land costs are different. Also if the offices were built within condo developments then the land becomes more or less paid for by the condo development