Newmarket Upper Canada Mall Redevelopment | ?m | 20s | Oxford Properties | RAW Design

innsertnamehere

innsertnamehere

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Newmarket's development applications website has this listed. No documents posted, but the project description says:

"
OPA for implementation of Master Plan to guide future long-term development. Master Plan proposal includes mixed use land uses of varying densities and heights, 5,000 new residential units, 9,700m2 of commercial space and 4,500 parking spaces above/below ground

Future development will require further development applications at a later date

"

Looks like Oxford is continuing it's mixed use master plan redevelopment of all its malls.
 
This kind of surprises me. Upper Canada isn't exactly a dying mall, and there are better places - especially along Davis Drive - that could be redeveloped, but this would be a bold step to affirming the city's position as a regional centre. I'm somewhat afraid that we could lose some of the good things the mall has gained in recent years - the Market & Co that replaced the Zellers/Target, for instance. I'm willing to bet that the old Sears property on the south end will be the first to come down, since it's really not in a good spot for anything but a department store..

Shame that they weren't able to incorporate some of the land immediately west of the mall, which was vacant for years but has now become generic low-density housing.

My other hope is that whatever proposed redevelopment has enough small-scale retail to compensate for what may be lost, because this mall has the nearest Kernels and I adore that stuff.
 
If it's anything like Oxford's other mall master plans (Yorkdale, Scarborough Town Centre, Square One), it will retain the mall and just develop the parking lots.
 
innsertnamehere said:
If it's anything like Oxford's other mall master plans (Yorkdale, Scarborough Town Centre, Square One), it will retain the mall and just develop the parking lots.
Click to expand...
Even if they only redeveloped the parking lots on the Davis Drive side and the old Sears property, that would be great news. If anything, commercial and office uses fronting Davis could very well free up other spaces along Davis or Yonge for redevelopment. The most recent big changes to the mall (the new food court and the Target redevelopment) have been in the northern half of the mall, anyways, so I wouldn't be disappointed if that part of the property was left untouched.
 
There are several new billboards for condo developments up along the Davis Dr. - Yonge St. to Southlake Hospital complex corridor, as well as in the general vicinity of Upper Canada Mall. The road improvements for the Viva buses is complete along Davis Dr. and nearing completion on Yonge. The new office complex north of the Courthouse at Yonge and Eagle is nearly complete as well. Newmarket will see big changes over the next 5-10 years.
 
Yonge between Davis and Green Lane is also scheduled to be widened / urbanized in the next few years as well.
Newmarket always used to have this sort of Wild West feel since all it’s main roads still had gravel shoulders and the public realm was just generally atrocious. With all the road upgrades it’s going to feel a lot more pedestrian friendly (in the sense that it will feel like traffic engineers have actually realized pedestrians exist, if not a nice scenic pedestrian mall), and it seems the density is going to start to come with it as well.
 
Somehow I doubt Newmarket will be pedestrian friendly any time soon.
 
The documents are posted now. It's very.... substantial.
These are the massing models.
1575054148441.png
 
I'm betwixt and between on the recent spate of mall intensification proposals.

Of course, I favour them in principle, and see them as a substantial improvement over the status quo of land wasted on surface parking.

But on the other hand, I am troubled by the fact that in almost every case, Sherway, Yorkdale, STC, Fairview and now Upper Canada, the original mall is left in tact.

That to me is very bad planning.

The original building footprints, typically centred on a massive super block, in an ocean of parking, continue to obstruct natural pedestrian movement with human-scaled blocks.

I'm not suggesting the entire mall(s) be torn down; but it would be nice to see at least some division of the super block, even creating a single new street through the footprint, leaving anchors/signature spaces intact.

Wishful thinking, I know.
 
I think all we can hope right now is that these masterplans are designed in a way that allows for the eventual replacement of the malls someday without creating a total mess in terms of the resulting urban fabric.
 
These malls will likely be here to stay into the near future, as they've essentially become as surrogate main streets for the suburbs, and their interiors can sometimes sadly be the only attractive/comfortable/safe pedestrian environment in their localities.

The question of their longevity is not so much whether people want them or not, but whether the economics of an aging building combined with the impending retail apocalypse makes redevelopment more profitable than retaining the malls.
 
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