3.7K 
Throughout October, UrbanToronto is celebrating 20 YEARS, with stories looking back over the last two decades. Each day we are also checking out our ever-changing street scenes, comparing an older "Then" shot with an up-to-date "Now" shot.
For today's 'Then' and 'Now' we travel west from Toronto to Mississauga's City Centre; looking north up Confederation Parkway from Burnhamthorpe Road West - first in 2009, followed by 2023. The 'Then' photo (above) shows the newly-completed One Park Tower (2008) as the 38-storey building overshadowing all other structures in the immediate vicinity, as well as the vacant land on the west (left) side of Confederation Parkway.
However, flash-forward to 2023 (see the 'Now' photo below), and that same building is nearly invisible behind newer and taller mixed-use buildings. Much that can be seen in the 'Now' photo was completed between 2015-2020; the latest of which is the 43-storey Wesley Tower at Daniels City Centre (i.e. the white balcony-wrapped building in the foreground). The majority of the buildings on the left side of the image were all developed by Amacon as part of their Parkside Village: On the far-left is one of the two PSV towers (126m); centre-left are two of three Parkside Village Residences (108m & 135m); and in the distance is the under-construction Avia 1 & 2. Finally, the parking lot at the bottom-right of the image is subject to a recent application for five towers ranging from 52 to 65-storeys in height with over 3500 residential units.
Interestingly, the only consistent visual component between the two images is the width and layout of Confederation Parkway, which was already 5-lanes wide in 2009 in addition to a bike lane in both directions and lay-bys which would become street parking for the retail units of buildings still being completed more than a decade later. And while One Park Tower is now just one of many buildings in the City Centre, it remains an important landmark in Mississauga's 21st-century high-rise construction boom.
Come back tomorrow for another Then and Now from over UrbanToronto's last two decades!
* * *
Thank you to the companies joining UrbanToronto to celebrate our 20 years in business.
