Plane and simple
The hoped-for sale of Butt onville Airport will clear airspace over Markham for taller towers
At the Buttonville Municipal Airport, in the Toronto suburb of Markham, small airplanes can often be heard buzzing overhead as students train to fly at one of the country’s busiest aviation schools. But by 2023, those skies could be flightfree. The airport’s co-owners, Cadillac Fairview and the Sifton family, would like to sell the property sometime in the next three years for redevelopment.
And if a sale goes through, air traffic won’t be the only change to Markham’s horizon. For safety reasons, the city has long had an 18-storey height limit for areas beneath the airport’s flight paths. In the absence of planes taking off and landing, the city council would allow for taller towers.
Several are already in the works. Lifetime Developments owns a 5.8-acre parcel of land just southwest of Buttonville. Four years ago, when the Toronto-based company acquired the property at 8200 Warden Avenue — formerly a parking lot for a nearby IBM office next to a grassy field — their plan was to stick to the zoning. Now, “the potential for Buttonville Closing will allow us to go taller in Markham,” says Brian Brown, a vice-president at Lifetime Developments.
“It gives us the opportunity to do something more iconic, something that will be visible as people drive by on the 407.”
At the moment, Brown’s plans — called Panda, for the facade’s distinctive black- and- white colour scheme — include four towers between 34 and 58 storeys, including a total of 2,315 apartments and almost 21,000 square feet of retail. The height should allow residents to have unimpeded views of Toronto’s skyline. “The land immediately south is a ravine connecting to the Rouge River, so I don’t expect there will ever be towers there,” says Brown. Even if Buttonville continues to operate, Brown is “optimistic” that Lifetime can work with city councillors to safely shift the flight path and allow the project to continue.
But are the suburb’s residents ready for the high life? Possibly. Markham is one of Ontario’s fastest- growing communities. In 2001, its population was 208,000. By 2017, the number had grown 65 per cent to 343,000. For comparison, Toronto grew by 18 per cent over the same period.
Markham’s outsized spurt is partly due to its still having land to develop. Buttonville Airport alone is 170 acres — a massive tract compared to the available sites in densely built downtown Toronto. The city has also effectively diversified from being a bedroom community to a place to work as well, particularly in the lucrative STEM field. In addition to IBM, Markham has more than 37,000 jobs at 1,500 tech companies — including Lenovo, GE Energy and a General Motors research hub employing upwards of 700 engineers.
Many of those jobs are in a development called Downtown Markham — one of the largest master- planned communities in Canada. At the 243-acre site, owned and financed by the Remington Group, there are more than 3.4 million square feet of office space either built or under construction. Beyond offices, there is a new movie theatre, dozens of restaurants and more than $ 30 million worth of public art.
Downtown Markham is on the east side of Warden Road, just north of the 407. Panda is on the west side, effectively across the street. “Originally, the city expected to have high density only on the east side,” says Brown. “But because there has been so much appetite for housing, and because there is so much growth potential that’s still being realized, that density looks like it will extend to the west as well.” Lifetime hopes to get approval for the project’s general plan from the city’s design review panel by the end of this year.
The exact composition of the towers is still being
worked out by Hariri Pontarini, Lifetime Developments’ architects. But there will be townhouses ringing the podiums of the buildings, and a mix of one-, two- and
three- bedroom units for what Brown expects to be a diverse community of young professionals, families and empty nesters.
“We know from our brokers that people will want larger units than are typical downtown,” he says. “And we are planning on generous planted terraces facing the ravine. We hope the extra greenery continues the natural feel of the area.”
It might not be the traditional suburban dream that some have in mind — the stand-alone home with a big backyard. But by the time Panda is finished in a few years’ time, it isn’t likely that Markham will look anything like a suburb.
Prices to be announced closer to release. For more information, visit lifetimedevelopments.com.