Woodbridge_Heights said:
FWIW a study done by vaughan figured that approx 1.5 million sq ft of office space is what would be required for the VMC to "succeed" (or whatever you want to call it). I imagine that would be spread out among multiple low to mid rise towers rather than a handful of tall high rise towers. Not sure how many sq ft this 14 story tower is...
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300,00 s.f.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-rel...mixed-used-development-tsx-cwt.un-1719912.htm

As for the hockey rink.....the "myth" is that cities chase rinks/franchises....cities are sold on the idea by developers/owners/sports guys who have land.

I am, reasonably, sure that if someone with enough land and a viable plan had approached Vaughan with a proposal for here they would have considered it. Would they have approved a +/- $200 million contribution of public funds? That might have rasied some eyebrows (as it is raising in Markham now too)....that said, as a neutral without any bias one way or the other...yeah this would probably have been a better location than Markham.
 
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Woodbridge_Heights said:
FWIW a study done by vaughan figured that approx 1.5 million sq ft of office space is what would be required for the VMC to "succeed" (or whatever you want to call it). I imagine that would be spread out among multiple low to mid rise towers rather than a handful of tall high rise towers. Not sure how many sq ft this 14 story tower is...
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I remember that but they were talking about 6 million or so by this developer so it looks like they may try for more !

I think the report concluded that 1.5 was all they could get ... but 300,000 is pretty darn big for a suburban office tower.
 
taal said:
I remember that but they were talking about 6 million or so by this developer so it looks like they may try for more !

I think the report concluded that 1.5 was all they could get ... but 300,000 is pretty darn big for a suburban office tower.
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The six million feet talked about by Calloway/Smart Centres is not all office.....it includes residential and retail....one Walmart is about the same s.f. as this first office tower.
 
TOareaFan said:
The six million feet talked about by Calloway/Smart Centres is not all office.....it includes residential and retail....one Walmart is about the same s.f. as this first office tower.
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Walmart is 300K ! That seems a bit high, I'd think 200K max, even for the largest store ?

You're right though I re-read it:
lmost 6 million square feet of commercial, residential and retail development.
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taal said:
Walmart is 300K ! That seems a bit high, I'd think 200K max, even for the largest store ?

You're right though I re-read it:
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Yeah...I exagerated (unintentionally) the size of Walmarts but the point is that we have to be careful in mixing the proponents separate statements of 1.5 million s.f. of office and 6 million s.f. of total space. A good chunk of that additional 4.5 million s.f. will be residential and the balance retail.
 
Anyway I emailed them about the move and to my surprised they actually answered, not much info though, but I'll paste it here anyway for the curious:

Thank you for your enquiry. The move to Vaughan demonstrates KPMG's commitment to the GTA and our ability to address the business needs of the community. KPMG chose Vaughan as our new location because it is a preferred location for KPMG Enterprise clients. The new office is a state-of-the-art, LEED-certified building with all the amenities of an urban lifestyle - making it an excellent space for our people. The decisions around what jobs will be located at the Vaughan location will be determined over the next two to three years.
KPMG will still maintain a Canadian headquarters at Bay-Adelaide Centre in downtown Toronto as well as this new location.
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Probably corresponds with what was stated earlier i.e. there big office around Yonge and York Mills will probably be relocated
 
^^^ Well from what I've read all the "right" things are being done. IIRC there will be an underground PATH-like connection to the subway station, and there is a significant urban plaza component to the plan.
 
Going underground and building plazas is not what I think of when I think of urban. Meeting the street, mixed use, density, walkability, transit etc are what count. Let's see if they can figure that out.
 
Ed007Toronto said:
Going underground and building plazas is not what I think of when I think of urban. Meeting the street, mixed use, density, walkability, transit etc are what count. Let's see if they can figure that out.
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You'd like to think that but at the end of the day what matters is how attractive an area is for businesses and their employees ... as much as I despise it the PATH is a huge asset and many companies will not leave the core (to near-core locations i.e. Yonge and Bloor or the like) due to the attractiveness of the PATH.


Anyway, looking at those renderings ... I'm not seeing anything that resembles much in the way of what I consider Urabansim ... its interesting to see how it contrasts with Downtown Markham's plan.
 
North of Toronto, a new downtown sprouts in suburban Vaughan

KPMG is set to become the main tenant in an office tower in the heart of Vaughan’s bustling downtown. The only catch is that the downtown doesn’t exist yet.

The space around the proposed KPMG Tower looks like a largely vacant pocket of suburbia just north of Toronto.

The consulting company began its search for additional office space a couple of years ago because its downtown Toronto-based practice catering to entrepreneurs was growing so quickly.

“We looked at a variety of locations across the northern corridor, but really the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre was able to offer everything that we were looking for, particularly central access through the subway and growth in the business community,” said Beth Wilson, GTA managing partner at KPMG. Construction on the building is to start within the year.

If the ambitious vision for the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) comes to fruition, the expanse of land surrounding the future site of the 15-storey KPMG tower will soon sprout a densely packed urban core where people can live, work, shop and play.

The tower site sits on land that’s owned by Calloway Real Estate Investment Trust and SmartCentres, two firms that have specialized in Wal-Mart-anchored shopping centres, making this an unusual project for them. They’ve been talking about it for years but just agreed last fall on final terms to jointly own and develop 53 acres that they describe as being at centre ice of the VMC.

Key to the project is an 8.6-kilometre subway extension that is under construction (with $2.6-billion of funds from various levels of government) that will connect the VMC, via a new subway station near the KPMG tower, to downtown Toronto’s Union Station. The extension is scheduled for completion in late 2016.
More.............http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...n-sprouts-in-suburban-vaughan/article7332686/
 
It looks promising, but the continued mix of high-density suburban city centres and low-density subdivisions in Greater Toronto make me uneasy. Surely, there's something more metropolitan to build in a metropolis like this one than a bunch of towers surrounded by McMansions.
 
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