Well seen Solaris!
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I went to VCC for the first time today and there's nothing there. Is that block going to be transformed or is the station just to serve as a transit hub as an island onto itself?
the problem is alot of 905 jobs are factory type jobs and never have very good asthetic looking buildings. Even if alot of the 905 jobs moved here I am doubtful it would look anything close to this. Plus one of the thngs 905 jobs really want is a ocean of parking available for their employees. IF they had to build underground parking lots to make up for all the old spots it would become a very expensive project for companys trying to save money NOT spend money.
Factory jobs? No, the service and retail sectors are plenty big and there's going to be a lot more mixed-use/residential. There's already a few thousand condo units approved just across the street from that and I don't think it will be too hard for Tormont to find a seller when their time is up.
Anyway, the reason there's nothing on that site right now (aside from the Walmart/Lowes/Future Shop) is obvious when you think about it: after the initial round of development there was no point building any more until it was obvious the subway was coming. Too late for big box, too early for mixed use.
So, in answer to the question above, yes all that land is vacant because it's waiting for the subway. I've seen the rough plans for that segment and while it will undoubtedly take time it's not going to be sitting in the middle of nowhere for long. (Some of the adjacent construction can't go ahead yet until the cut-and-cover is complete, but it will.)
Those plans also include NO surface parking whatsoever at full build-out so the 905 sixrings is talking about is the 905 of the past. It doesn't apply to a provincially designated growth node built around a subway station in 2011.
I think the 905 is going to become somewhat, for a lack of a better term, bi-polar. There will still be the cookie cutter suburbs for a long while into the future, but there will also be denser nodes of mixed-use centred around the intersection of major transit lines.
The development going on throughout much of Vaughan is the former, Vaughan Centre (I refuse to call it Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, I think we should stick with a consistent naming convention for nodes throughout the GTA) is the latter.
I would agree with that for the time being -- there's going to be a "limbo" time period.
I kind of hate to be this way; but it's definitely a generational thing; the older immigrant types and those that moved up here to get away from the city in the early 90's are going to be replaced eventually, by younger, more "urban" and liberal families, teens and adults, thus (hopefully) bringing in change. Something that an older generation didn't/doesn't want.