Mississauga : Development News

Highway 27 was shut down for the last three days, ending this morning, to allow six enormous vats destined for Molson Coors' Carlingview Drive brewery to be delivered from the Port of Hamilton.

At 40,000 kg, 8 metres high and 7 metres in diameter, the vats are meant to increase the brewery's production capacity, according to Gord Gilchrist, project manager for Mammoet, the heavy transportation company responsible for the transfer.

"This is probably one of the smallest things we'll move this year," Gilchrist says, explaining his company generally hauls transformers, generators and petrochemical equipment, often having to plot routes that avoid bridges when loads are too heavy for them to support.

No such measures had to be taken this time. "These things are really small," Gilchrist says with a chortle. But they did have a police escort, and in addition to Highway 27, Disco Road, Attwell Drive, Belfield Road, Farnboro Road and Dixon Road all had to be closed at various times during the last three nights.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gord Gilchrist

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a cool new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

The walls have gone up on Toronto's second Whole Foods. It's being built in a section of the old Wal-Mart parking lot at Square One in Mississauga, and this week, the ceilings, which are also mostly up, will be joined to the walls in time, Whole Foods' Toronto man hopes, to beat most of the winter's snows.

"We're going full-tilt ahead," says Peter Hilge, Metro store team leader. "We're working 24 hours a day on that site."

The 40,000 square foot store -- the same size as the current flagship shop in Yorkville's Hazelton Lanes -- is being built as a separate structure on the Square One property, designed by Petroff.

The store will include all the regular Whole Foods amenities, but will also be adding more windows to the back rooms, so people can see what's going on.

"One of the things a lot of people don't understand is a lot of the things are done from scratch in each store," Hilge says. "We want the people to be more a part of what we're doing in Square One."

The opening date for the store has been set for July 28, 2011.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Peter Hilge

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a cool new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

Thanks to some federal stimulus funding, the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto is getting a new $70-million building.

Built on a former parking lot on the west-end campus, the 150,000 square foot Instruction Centre will include new lecture rooms and larger spaces for such things as exam-writing and other mass gatherings. The building was designed by Shore, Tillbe Perkins and Will.

The design includes distinctive copper cladding for the building, which will appear to be constructed out of stacked blocks. According to the architects, the building is intended to "frame a new entry plaza at the north end of the campus" and create a "new hub of student life."

Work began on the project in March of 2009 and according to Nadeem Shabbar, the university's chief real estate officer, it's one of the few large recipients of the stimulus funding that is expected to be completed in time for the program's stated March 31, 2011 deadline.

This is the second large commission on the UTM campus for the architecture firm, which also designed the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre and Library, a 98,000 square foot, four-storey building completed in 2006.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Nadeem Shabbar

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or being renovated, a park in the works or even a cool new house being built in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

Mississauga is getting its biggest LCBO next week, a 16,000 square foot location with 11,000 square feet of selling space at Eglinton and Glen Erin Drive at the Erin Mills Town Centre.

"Mississauga is a growing area," says LCBO spokesman Chris Layton. "We're trying to go to more freestanding locations with better visibility. It affords more space, an adequate levels of parking, And in the case of Eglinton, we expect quite a bit of walk-in traffic."

The store will have 3,000 different products for sale, including 800 under the Vintages rubric.

The latest of a string of large-format stores to go up around the GTA, the Mississauga location has cost about $1.4 million to construct.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Chris Layton


Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or renovating, even a cool new house in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

A unique building at Pearson airport, which started out as a simple utilitarian project to train its own staff and ended up a dynamic for-profit institute run by the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, has won a 2010 Ontario Architects Association award for design excellence.

Designed by Kleinfeldt Mychajlowycz Architects Incorporated, which was previously cited by the OAA for their own offices at 147 Portland St., the Fire and Emergency Training Services Institute trains fire and emergency personnel in its classrooms, using such facilities as a burn building and a rescue tower.

If the project receives the LEED Silver certification it's aiming for with its passive solar collection panels and reduced energy and water consumption, it will be the airport's first LEED building.

"It exceeded forecasts in regard to recovered solar energy," says project manager Gerald Lambers.

Construction on the 25,000 square foot, $13.5-million building began in November, 2005 and was completed in January, 2007. The prize will be awarded next month.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Gerald Lambers

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or renovating, even a cool new house in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

Part of what seems from the outside to be a perpetual expansion of Starbucksian proportions, Shoppers Drug Mart is opening a larger location in Port Credit, a relocation from a smaller store in a strip mall just east of the new Lakeshore and Pine location.

"What we're doing in many cases," says Tammy Smitham, Director of Communication and Corporate Affairs for the company, "is to take our smaller format stores that have potential to be large format, and put them into larger spaces, more than 14,000 square feet of selling space, which allows us to offer the latest in what Shoppers Drug Mart has become well known for."

In this case, the associate owner, Gus Falameh -- each Shoppers Drug Mart is individually owned -- will remain the owner of the larger space, which in addition to doubling the floor space will employ all its former employees and possibly add several more.

The full size of the new location, which had its distinctive red panels up as of last week, will be 17,500 square feet including storage and back rooms.

The store is due to open at the end of April.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Tammy Smitham

Do you know of a new building going up, a business expanding or renovating, even a cool new house in the neighbourhood? Please send your development news tips to [email protected].

The University of Toronto will get its first suburban medical training facility next year, a $37-million health sciences complex on the school's rapidly expanding Mississauga campus.

Built on a little less than half of an existing above-ground parking lot, the 5,960 square metre (60,000 square feet) building will house the Mississauga Academy of Medicine, which will be the academic base for 216 medical students while they complete their clinical training, mostly at the nearby Trillium Health Centre and Credit Valley Hospital.

The province contributed $15.6 million to the project, designed by Kongats Architects, which the university expects will reach full capacity by 2014.

"The St. George campus has limited ability to expand," says UTM's chief administrative officer, Paul Donoghue, explaining the decision to extend the university's medical faculty to what was for years considered a satellite campus, but which is now gaining a centrality of its own.

The building will also house the  biomedical communications program, which trains students to be medical illustrators and animators.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Donoghue

The University of Toronto's Mississauga campus is getting a $70-million, 13,000 square metre (140,000 square feet) classroom block. Work is well underway for the project, which broke ground in October, and will ultimately house 27 new teaching spaces, from a 500-seat lecture theatre to 30-seat seminar rooms.

"We're just busting at the seams," says UTM's chief administrative officer Paul Donoghue, using a phrase common among staff at the rapidly expanding university. Donoghue says that 10 years ago, when the university established its master plan, UTM had about 5,000 students.

"We're now at 11,500," he says, growth he ascribes to the changing demography of Ontario and the GTA.

The Instructional Centre is being built on what was a 300-space parking lot, a space designated for development in the master plan. Once completed, UTM will be adding some accessible parking spots near the building.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Paul Donoghue

Mississauga-based builder EllisDon was named the second best employer in the country for 2009 in the Report of Business's annual 50-best list (PCL Constructors, another builder, based in Edmonton with an office in Mississauga, came in first.)

One of the largest builders, contractors and project management companies in the country, with 1,965 employees in Canada, about $2 billion in annual projects across the country, the States and the United Arab Emirates, the employee-owned company is behind such projects as the Bay-Adelaide Centre, Concord Park Place and the Ritz-Carlton.

"Having construction companies in both the first and second spot is quite an achievement," said Janine Szczepanowski, EllisDon's vice-president of leadership and entrepreneurial development in a press release, "and it is a testament to what companies like EllisDon and PCL have been able to do for the industry and its perception as a solid career choice on a number of levels. We have had another successful year and everyone's contribution has kept us amongst the best of the best."

It's the ninth consecutive year EllisDon has placed on this list. Last year, they topped the list.

Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Report on Business, EllisDon