EYEING THE FUTURE? A city plan shows a very different "Avenue 7" just east of Hwy. 400. Plans to rebuild the corporate centre have been in the works for over a decade.
A new downtown’s coming Vaughan’s way.
Slowly.
The garment of big box stores at Hwys. 400 and 7 will be revamped into a high-density district known as the Vaughan Corporate Centre — in the next 20 years.
The centre, spread across 125 acres of land, will be a place where Vaughanians can “eat, work and play,” complete with high-rise office and residential towers, shops and a subway station, says Vaughan Ward 4 councillor Sandra Yeung Racco.
“The corporate centre is the most crucial piece of land right now in Vaughan,” Racco says.
Vaughan won’t be a plethora of big-box stores in a few years time, she says. It’ll be a dynamic urban area.
The core development is being planned for a site along Hwy. 7, just east of Hwy. 400.
The city hopes a tree-lined main street will bisect a ring-road to create an efficient transit system, when coupled with VIVA transit and the extended subway.
With $2.3 billion dollars of funding approved for extending the Spadina-University line north to Jane St. and Hwy. 7, Racco says 905ers could be riding the rocket to the corporate centre as early as 2013.
Extending the subway line is the first step in creating the downtown district.
To date, the federal, provincial and municipal governments have agreed to contribute a third of the cost, with the city of Vaughan and Region of York going halves on the $670-million municipal portion.
“Now that we have been successful in getting the money and commitment from everyone for the subway,” she says, “we have to look at the Corporate Centre much more seriously and ask ourselves what we want to see.”
Private planning consultants like Peter Weston have already begun envisioning the transformation west of Hwy. 400.
Weston says six months ago Frank Palladini approached him to find a new use for his parcel of land at Weston Rd. and Hwy. 7. Palladini’s used car dealership currently occupies the site.
“Frank came to me and asked, ‘Peter, what can I do?’ ” he says. “The question was literally that open-ended.”
At a city council meeting on June 3, Weston presented councillors and residents with his answer: three condominium towers, 24, 28 and 32 stories each with a mix of 70 percent residential and 30 percent commercial space.
Because the corporate centre plan has been in the works for 15 years, Weston said he thought high-density towers would be well received.
“I anticipated a reasonably positive response,” says Weston. “The response is never, never 100 percent positive … there’s always issues to be dealt with.”
The city has identified 11 issues for him and his client to deal with in their proposal for the site.
“The elephant in the room is transportation,” Weston says. “Without a YRT regime in place … we could build the residential component, but traffic will be worsened.”
For the corporate centre to grow successfully, Weston says, infrastructure to handle the intersection’s traffic needs to be in place. This includes dedicated bus lanes along Hwy. 7 as well an overpass to built from Christlea Rd. to Portage St.
Otherwise, the area does not have the adequate infrastructure to handle the intensification, Weston says.
Not to worry, says Dale Albert, spokesperson for York Region Rapid Transit.
“We have plans underway for rapid transit along Hwy. 7,” Albert says. “There will be dedicated bus lanes along the highway to ensure people get to and from the centre quickly and easily.”
Bus rapid transit should come into play by 2014, depending on the amount of money contributed from all levels of government, Albert says.
Regardless of when rapid buses come into play, Weston expects real transportation changes will be made when construction in the area begins.
“In order to get the realization and generate the enthusiasm and optimus for the corporate centre … a building has got to happen,” says Weston. “When we start seeing real buildings, the investment in (bus transit) will be easy to justify.”
But, he says, he won’t be the developer “to pull the trigger,” with construction on Palladini’s towers slated to begin in 2010.
“The guy who goes for it is going to prove the feasibility,” Weston says. “Then the possibility of this happening becomes quite real.”
Meanwhile corporate centre plans are enough to cause a stir with area residents and big box neighbours.
At the June 3 meeting, a handful of homeowners have expressed concern that high-rise buildings will overcast the area, and nearby business owners worry about traffic.
Tiziana Baccega, spokesperson for Home Depot, says the company does have a few minor concerns about Weston’s project, but overall, it welcomes the intensification.
“Look at all the condos they are building … people (will need) home stuff,” she says. “We welcome any new development to the area and will work with them in the planning stages.”
Among Home Depot’s concerns toward Palladini’s project are visitor parking, road density and ensuring the condo residents understand they will be getting a rear view of the company’s building.
But Weston says Home Depot may have more to worry about than condo visitors abusing the store’s parking lot.
“They’ll be replaced by higher order or higher intensity commercial and office buildings,” he says. “If the predominant means of transportation is public transit, then the opportunity to sell lumber diminishes dramatically … and the site becomes obsolete.”
Baccega says the company has no plan to move.
“We’ve been there since 1992 and are a happy member of the community,” she says. “From the blueprints we saw (developments) will be built around us.”
That’s true in the short term, Weston says. Taking the district from big-box complexes to sidewalk stores isn’t a change that happens overnight.
Weston says “lower order commercial buildings” such as gas stations and car dealerships will be the first to go, as well as vacant land.
“It will take at least two decades for us to go from big-box retail to a downtown,” he says.
Hannah Evans, director of consultation at Ontario’s Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal, says without a downtown, there would be no point in funding the subway line extension.
“We don’t want to fund a subway no one is going to use,” Evans says. “Having transportation where there’s density ensures a land-use relationship that works.”
The target set for the Vaughan Corporate Centre in the provincial Places to Grow Act is 200 jobs and residents per hectare by 2031. Currently, the area is at 15 jobs and residents per hectare.
“The centre should look as busy as (Toronto’s) Annex when it gets that dense,” Evans says.
While 2031 is years away, some changes are set to happen in the near future, including renaming Hwy. 7 “Avenue 7”.
