Mississauga Parkside Village Residences | 135.93m | 45s | Amacon | Richmond Architects

I posted this in the Transportation section, but there is an interesting snippet at the end of the article....looks like Amacon will be rolling out the Parkside Village project with an initial 3 buildings, by fall....

Transit a priority for Mississauga
TheStar.com - Athome - Transit a priority for Mississauga

May 12, 2007
MIKE FUNSTON
STAFF REPORTER

Major public transit improvements are planned over the next five years to avert crushing traffic congestion as the boom in high-density development in downtown Mississauga continues.

To avoid big traffic jams in the city centre planning district, which will become home to about 50,000 residents over the next 25 years, an efficient transit system is a must to encourage people to leave their cars at home, city officials say.

As the city's last open lands in Churchill Meadows and Meadowvale Village fill up with houses, development in Mississauga has shifted from the sprawling subdivisions that have been going up over the past 25 years to high-density projects, especially condominium towers.

Mississauga's population now stands at about 700,000, making it Canada's sixth largest city and second only to Toronto in the GTA.

The proposed improvements include a $259-million bus rapid transit system (BRT) along the Highway 403-Eglinton Ave. corridor to TTC connections at Renforth Dr., scheduled to open in 2012.

The timing of some projects in the city centre could also help accelerate the redevelopment that's expected along the Hurontario and Dundas corridors, says John Calvert, the city's director of policy planning.

Mississauga is also studying the feasibility of using light rail transit on Hurontario St. between Brampton and Port Credit. If that becomes a reality, Calvert expects a tremendous spark for redevelopment.

In the five years leading up to the BRT opening, the city plans to increase service frequency on primary and secondary bus routes, so a passenger doesn't have to wait more than 15 minutes at any stop, according to a report by transportation commissioner Martin Powell.

The plan is to add 15 more buses and 70,000 to 80,000 service hours in each of the five years beginning immediately. This will increase annual transit use from 40 to 50 rides per capita, and the number of annual fares from 29.7 million to 37 million, Powell says.

The city's share of provincial and federal gas taxes will pay for improvements to the system up to 2010. After that, property tax hikes of up to 2 per cent will be needed, he says. "We are still a very car-oriented municipality, but it's changing," adds Calvert, noting that the average downtown condo household has only one car, compared with the housing subdivisions where families with one car are an exception.

Already 7,800 units have been built in the downtown, with 8,000 more in the application process and a potential 15,700 on the drawing boards, Calvert says.

Downtown consists of the area around Square One Shopping Centre and the Mississauga Civic Centre off Burnhamthorpe Rd., west of Hurontario. This area is experiencing the highest density development with dozens of condominium towers as high as 50-storeys either already built, under construction or proposed.

Amacon Development Inc. alone plans 30 condominium towers of almost 6,000 units on 13 hectares of land to be phased in over 10 to 20 years, which will add another 12,000 people.

Lilliana De Cotiis, Amacon's vice-president of marketing and sales, says that transit improvements, especially the BRT, could accelerate the timing of projects.

"Better transit will benefit us. It's not only market conditions (that drives sales). It provides another reason for people to consider living in Mississauga. It adds an overall improvement to the city," De Cotiis says.

"That lack of infrastructure (transit) has come up in public hearings and sales surveys but I would call it a small challenge, not a big hindrance in our marketing," she says.

"The fact Mississauga will have a (rapid transit) link to Toronto should definitely help bring our projects to market sooner."

The company is seeking final approval from Mississauga Council to start a project with three buildings (the total number of units hasn't been determined) with sales tentatively set to begin next fall. "Our presentation centre is under construction," De Cotiis says.

Next fall as in 2008? Thats quite a wait... but at least we finally know when it will start!

Actually, I think he means this fall (2007), although the way the journalist has worded it is confusing...afaik, Amacon will officially launch 'elle' in a week or so (currently in pre-registration), and then sell it over the summer....that is the 3rd and final tower before they get to Parkside Village....assuming elle sells by Sept/Oct, they would then be ready to start marketing the Parkside project...hence the request for final approvals...

The sales office for Parkside Village is now pretty much complete on the exterior...it's pretty big as sales offices go, I guess they will need space for all the customers for those 50 & 45-storey towers!

also, FYI, they started pouring the first cement for the foundations of 'eve', after a long excavation, it is underway.

To be honest, this has to be one of the longest construciton periods for a sales centre in MCC. I remember when I first saw the crews on site over a year ago now thinking that it might be under way by this summer. The fact that they just got the outside done this year, but the inside is still untouched. I'm really optimistic about this project since it will have a huge impact on the future if done properly, but the fact the sales centre is taking forever makes me a little worried. Hopefully this project will be better than Eve/Eden/Elle which I'm not really feeling right now. I guess only time will tell.

Billboards are going up on the amacon sales centre today!

Thanks for the heads-up. Looks like just teaser ads for now:



Here is the initial rendering from the Website (www.lifeatparkside.com - just pre-registration at the moment):

looks like about 17 towers to start! Hope they haven't come too late in the real estate cycle...this should keep MCC busy for the next 10-15 years

WE'VE GOT PARKSIDE BABY!!!
Hopefully they'll take a bit more of a step in terms of architecture. Absolute showed that dishing out a bit more for design means that sales go a hell of a lot quicker.

12 000 people?! WOW... that'll make an interesting, bustling urban area!

With all the joy and heartfelt memories that only a modernist apartment complex can bring...

Actually, I like the render. This will bring more much-needed density to MCC.

Beyond Density
TheStar.com - living - Beyond Density


Mississauga: Long blocks and virtually empty sidewalks. Because great cities have short blocks and lively sidewalks, Mississauga wants a downtown grid that lures pedestrians – and Amacon's Parkside Village will help launch the vision

January 26, 2008
Dan O'Reilly
Special to the Star

For now, the vacant 12-hectare site just west of Mississauga's Civic Centre looks like most other potential development sites in suburbia – even if it is part of a downtown.

This spring, however, construction of Phase 1 of Mississauga's first "urban village" will begin, heralding a new era in the city centre's evolution.

In recent years, downtown Mississauga has amassed both significant density and a reasonably broad mix of land uses. But its sidewalks remain virtually empty, especially when compared with the attractive central areas of the world's great cities. And it's that lack of street life that Canada's sixth-largest city hopes to address starting with Parkside Village by Vancouver-based developer Amacon.

Just 30 years ago, the newly constructed Square One shopping complex and some vacant farmland was about all there was in this area. Now, this approximately 160-hectare, special-growth district in the Highway 403-Highway 10-Burnhamthorpe Rd. area really is the heart of Mississauga, says Ed Sajecki, the city's planning and building department commissioner.

A place that once provided little more than shopping and parking now has a fairly broad mix of uses. Besides the Civic Centre, the Living Arts Centre, the central library and other facilities, it's now a prime office and residential area, with new retail and restaurants integrated into the taller buildings.

Parkside Village will add a lot more density and broaden the mix of uses. There will be about 5,300 highrise, midrise and townhouse units for about 12,000 people in an 11-block development west of Confederation Parkway, north of Burnhamthorpe. Amacon will also add restaurants, stores, banks, offices and a hotel to the mix, Sajecki says. What makes this development different is the attention being paid to the street grid as part of an effort to enhance street life in an area still dominated by the car.

On one floor at the Civic Centre, there's a large Lego-style model that provides an overview of what the city centre will likely look like in 20 or 25 years. It allows the planning department to add miniature towers as it receives development applications, Sajecki says.

But the less noticeable things at street level may be at least as important to Mississauga's future. They include the planned construction of a new downtown park later this year, the redevelopment of two existing squares sometime in 2009, plus ongoing research into what other cities have accomplished.

Sajecki likes to say the "great cities have good bones," and he has put on presentations that include slides showing how central Mississauga's loose grid differs dramatically from the tight webs of streets common to cities where people like to walk.

"We're looking at what New York, Rome, Barcelona, Toronto, even Portland Ore., are doing," he says. "Our blocks are too long; we know that."

About 2 1/2 years ago, the commissioner and some of his staff travelled to Vancouver to meet with that city's planning department. "Vancouver has a very high standard of urban design," Sajecki says.

Based partly on Vancouver's experience, Mississauga last year created an urban design review panel, made up of architects, landscape architects and planning professionals, to serve as an advisory committee to the city.

As part of the overall review process of the Parkside Village proposal, the Vancouver trip also provided the opportunity to examine the type of projects Amacon and other West Coast developers were doing.

Not only will Parkside Village be one of the largest developments in Mississauga by a single landowner, it will also be one of the densest. But while the scale is large, the amount of detailed planning into the pedestrian-oriented development will set the standards for future development proposals in the city centre, Sajecki says.

Under the "unlimited height and unlimited density" provisions of a secondary plan designed to stimulate the growth of the city centre in the 1990s, Amacon could have pushed ahead with a traditional development. But it chose not to go that route, says Marilyn Ball, the city's design and development director.

"They cut the blocks in half," she says, citing Amacon's decision to divide the development into manageable blocks, which will result in a more urban-style, compact street grid.

There will be nine development blocks and two designated park blocks, which will help form a corridor of green space linking the Mississauga Civic Centre with Zonta Meadows, a city park to the west of the development, she says.

The development blocks will be dotted with "point towers" of varying heights, which will serve as a buffer and transition area for a single-family subdivision, also to the west. Point towers are tall, slender buildings set back from the street on podiums, instead of the more traditional massive condominiums built at grade, Ball says.

"They're more pedestrian-friendly. As you walk by them on the street level, you're not as conscious of the tower."

Another hallmark of Parkside Village will be a "sophisticated mix of uses," including ground-floor retail shops, especially along Confederation Parkway, she says. Other examples of the intensive detailed planning include maintaining a 30-metre space between adjacent residential and commercial towers and the avoidance of blank walls or other "dead spots" at grade.

"The city didn't want areas where there is no life," explains Sal Vitiello, principal, E.I. Richmond Architects Ltd., the Toronto-based architects for the developer.

Amacon has already established a strong presence in the city centre area with two fully occupied condo buildings, a third under construction and a fourth in the planning stages. But the inspiration for Parkside Village are the projects that Amacon and other West Coast firms have undertaken in Vancouver, Vitiello says.

"There is definitely a unique and recognizable approach to planning and urban design principles in Vancouver, and many of these West Coast approaches have been incorporated into the design. These include an emphasis on curb appeal, encouraging an active street life, the use of point-tower architecture and a focus on buildings at grade."

Almost five years of planning and negotiations with the city have been invested in the project. It was a process that encompassed countless meetings with city staff, recreating an original design and the hiring of Urban Strategies, a Toronto planning firm, to create the detailed design components. The result was an urban design document that serves as a guide for the planning principles.

Not only is Amacon the first developer in Mississauga to produce such a document, it's also the first to have its plans reviewed by the city's the new urban design review panel. The document will be incorporated into the development agreement, Vitiello says.

With its planned at-grade retail space on Confederation Parkway and partly along the internal side streets, Parkside Village won't be the type of condo development where residents simply come home at night and don't venture outside again until the following morning, says Lilliana Di Franco, Amacon's marketing and sales vice-president. "It will be true urban village with activity," says Di Franco, who helped create the original concept vision with Amacon president Marcello DeCotiis.

Sidewalks will be between 10 and 12 feet wide but at the corner of Princess Royal Dr. and Confederation Parkway, "the sidewalk will be approximately 30 feet in width to create a focal point and allow for café seating and an active street life and gathering point," she says.

Phase 1, with one 40-storey and two 36-storey condo towers, is scheduled to begin this spring.

I'm glad to see that so much thought and planning has actually gone into this one. Hopefully it will pay off in the long run and not just be a bunch of mish-mash that the developer ignores and the city doesn't enforce.

A couple things caught my eye- the first phase of a 40, and two 36ers. I don't have the original planning document on me, but if these are going to be the tallest then it looks like the original 45, and two 40s lost some of their height which isn't as much fun. The other thing- a possible 4th tower @ the eden/elle/eve site?

"On one floor at the Civic Centre, there's a large Lego-style model that provides an overview of what the city centre will likely look like in 20 or 25 years. It allows the planning department to add miniature towers as it receives development applications, Sajecki says."

Are there any pics of this mini-Mississauga model floating around?

yyzer said:

Actually, I think he means this fall (2007), although the way the journalist has worded it is confusing...afaik, Amacon will officially launch 'elle' in a week or so (currently in pre-registration), and then sell it over the summer....that is the 3rd and final tower before they get to Parkside Village....assuming elle sells by Sept/Oct, they would then be ready to start marketing the Parkside project...hence the request for final approvals...

The sales office for Parkside Village is now pretty much complete on the exterior...it's pretty big as sales offices go, I guess they will need space for all the customers for those 50 & 45-storey towers!

also, FYI, they started pouring the first cement for the foundations of 'eve', after a long excavation, it is underway.

Click to expand...

Since it taken over 2 years to build the sales office and what taking place on Hurontario, I don't give much hope for this developer.

Pouring the foundation for EVE!!!!!, that one foundation as I see it up to the 7th floor now.

There needs to be a review of this project to deal with the lack of base for the whole area.

scarberiankhatru said:

Are there any pics of this mini-Mississauga model floating around?

Click to expand...

There was a picture in The Star but the online article doesn't show it. It does show these though:

http://www.thestar.com/fpLarge/photo/297206