$1.5B M City Development Marks A New Era For Mississauga

At 60 storeys, M City’s maiden tower will be Mississauga’s tallest yet. And a twin could follow, developer Mark Reeve said, a bookend for downtown’s western flank to complement the iconic Absolute World towers at the eastern edge.

Reeve, a partner with Urban Capital Property Group, is above right with Rogers VP John Anderton and a model of M City's inaugural tower (784 units), the first of 10 structures in a $1.5B, 15-acre master planned community at Hurontario Street and Burnhamthorpe Road. This represents the first major project by Rogers Real Estate Development, the family’s private holding company. The 4.3M SF development is being led by Urban Capital, which was tapped by Rogers years ago to manage turning a long-held family asset — the company's only land holding — into a legacy community.

M City’s master plan is fully approved and includes two acres of public parkland. New York-based urban design firm Cooper Robertson designed the project’s overall framework, and Toronto’s CORE Architects won a design competition for the first building, an undulating tower with seven floor plates that stack and twist as it rises. This non-rectangular geometry “creates the impression of fluid movement and lightness of mass,” lead architect Babak Eslahjou said. The podium houses amenities (including an outdoor pool, kids play zone / splash pad and skating rink) and 30k SF of retail, plus six levels of parking (two above grade).

Ted Rogers bought the M City site back in the 1960s, seeing the farmland as an ideal spot to locate transmitters for radio station CHFI, one of his first ventures. The transmitters were relocated in the '90s, but the site was retained by Rogers, with much of the land developed and sold to homebuilders. In 2002 the swath was rezoned for added residential density and a mix of uses, and it’s now a cornerstone of the City of Mississauga’s Downtown 21 plan, which centres on a new 20-stop LRT line. “We saw things evolving and thought what better time than now to establish what we’d like to do with the site,” Anderton said.

M City’s first tower will mark the western entryway to downtown Mississauga, and Reeve hinted a sister building could be in the cards for the block just to the south of it. “We get the question all the time, 'Are you going to twin it?'” he said. “Well, there’s a strong probability we’ll do another version of that building.” Unit sales on the first tower launch in March, and the plan is to be under construction a year later, with completion slated for four years from now. “We wanted to lead with our best foot forward,” Reeve said. “We want this to be a truly iconic flagship building that’s a catalyst for downtown Mississauga.”