Building an axis in Ajax
The rapidly growing town will soon add a downtown core to its list of assets
Matthew Petrovic, 25, has grown up just as his hometown of Ajax has also grown since his family moved there 20 years ago.
“Even though it has more than 100,000 people now, it still feels like a small town and the same place I grew up in,” he says. “If I go to the library, the same ladies are working there. And everything, like shopping, grocery stores, are close.
“And it has a good balance with nature — I enjoy rollerblading on the Waterfront Trail,” he says of the paved path along the town’s six-kilometre stretch of protected lakefront and southern border of 150-acre Rotary Park. In all, Ajax boasts 1,482 acres of parkland and green spaces.
Though Petrovic works in downtown Toronto, his family and friends are in Ajax.
He considered buying a condo in Toronto, but when he heard about Central Park Ajax, a mixed-used development helping create a new downtown along Harwood Ave., he felt it was right. He bought a 740square-foot, one-bedroom-with-den unit for $259,000 in the masterplanned community’s first condo building, where 380 of its 410 units quickly sold out in late spring.
“This is the first time there have been new condos in Ajax (in 25 years) and I see it as a good investment,” Petrovic says. “I’m not sure whether I will live there, but I’ve been saving for a long time and it’s a good place to put my money.”
Developer Thomas Liu, 34, CEO of the Lemine Investment Group, knew little about the town — even though it’s just 15 minutes east from where he and his wife studied at U of T’s Scarborough campus. When Liu heard about the development opportunity for a downtown on land owned by Ajax, he was astonished by what his research uncovered.
“When we looked at the data, it was staggering,” he says. “The population growth (current population is 130,000), the average income, the strength of the rental market . . . It was tremendous.”
The town is the fastest growing in the GTA; its population has doubled in the past 20 years and the average age of residents is 36.
Central Park Ajax, at the site of 1950s-era Ajax Plaza, will be a gamechanger, bringing 1,300 new office units, 200 retail spaces and 3,000 residential units to the 18-acre site. It’s next to city hall and the commercial core, surrounded by medical offices, stores, restaurants and entertainment venues. The GTA’s largest GO Train station (with 1,200 parking spots) and Hwys. 401 and 407 are close. It’s also minutes from the waterfront.
Councillor Pat Brown has purchased a two-bedroom, two-bathroom corner unit in the first condo building at Central Park Ajax and will move when it’s built in 2019. When Brown and her British parents moved to Ajax in 1958, the town had just 6,000 people. Now it has 161,000.
“We need something like this for our seniors who have had to move out of town, away from their family and friends, to downsize,” Brown says. “It will be good for young people, too, who are looking to buy their first home or others who don’t want to worry about looking after a big yard and garden.”
Brown says the town and the developer worked in close collaboration to develop a plan.
“The town’s priority was to maintain the retail . . . we want to maintain the doctors and dentists, and hopefully the additional new office space will attract new business to town.”
Ajax Plaza is one and two storeys and the new buildings will be15 to 20 storeys. All current retail tenants have the opportunity to move back into the new space, says Liu.