Two real estate heavyweights are teaming up to bring a new shine to Scarborough’s 67-year-old
Developers claim project in Scarborough will help break down inequities
Real estate heavyweights Choice Properties REIT and the Daniels Corporation are teaming up to revitalize the Golden Mile Plaza in Scarborough, but the proponents are promising more than shiny new condo and apartment towers and shopping locales.
Tuesday’s announcement of their joint partnership — a proposal to redevelop a 7.7-hectare site near Eglinton Avenue East and Victoria Park Avenue — includes Phase 1 plans for two condo towers, one purposebuilt market rental apartment highrise and ground-floor retail.
The site is the home of a 67year-old plaza and the goal in the end is to turn the spot into a massive mixed-use, mixed-income neighbourhood with 10 high-rises and 3,770 units of housing.
The location is part of the broader Golden Mile Secondary Plan, which covers a 113hectare area running along Eglinton between Victoria Park and Birchmount Road. It’s expected to be home to 40,000 additional residents over time, with growth anchored by the Eglinton Crosstown LRT.
But in addition to the goal of creating a new neighbourhood on their portion of the Golden Mile zone, Daniels (a major developer in Regent Park) and Choice Properties (the real estate division of the Weston family, owners of Loblaws) say they want their project to have inherent benefits for the broader
community as well, not just residents in the new units.
That’s why phase one calls for the creation of a “communiversity”: leased space where academics, researchers and others from the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus would work with non-profits and other local agencies to improve access to post-secondary learning for residents in the surrounding area and facilitate the creation of a sustainable and inclusive community.
Centennial College is also slated to be a partner operating out of the “communiversity” to assist with training and other educational aspects. The college and U of T would get up to 15,000 square feet of space on the plaza redevelopment site.
The “communiversity” is part of a broader concept for the proposed Golden Mile Plaza redevelopment — the establishing of a community innovation district, a place that encourages higher learning, skills training and serves as an incubator for
new businesses that could help bring back the Golden Mile’s former lustre, says Mitch Cohen, president and CEO of Daniels.
“It all stems from an approach to development that is thinking beyond bricks and mortar. Yes we need to think about buildings and we are and we’ll design great buildings.
“But it’s also thinking quite deeply at a very early stage about integrating social-infrastructure opportunities, capacity-building opportunities for local residents and all kinds of pathways to jobs and career paths,” Cohen says in an interview.
Cohen called the “communiversity” — a merging of the words community and university — a very exciting idea that grew out of discussions between U of T’s Scarborough campus and the United Way about breaking down barriers between “ivory tower institutions” and people on the ground who never think about
having access to institutions for higher learning.
The overall goal is restarting the local economy in the Golden Mile zone, an area that was once teeming with industries and served as a hub for businesses decades ago.
The concepts of the innovation district and “communiversity” fall in line with the inclusive local economic opportunity (ILEO), an initiative of the United Way and BMO where over a dozen corporate leaders and not-for-profits from the Golden Mile neighbourhood came together to think about the area holistically.
“We want to create a research and monitoring framework so we can see if more jobs, more revenue (can return to the) neighbourhood, more business seed there, build head offices there. Our hope is this is a blueprint to take to other neighbourhoods in Toronto,” United Way president and CEO Daniele Zanotti says of the “communiversity.”