Toronto shopping plaza could be torn down for enormous 7-tower complex

Shopping plazas and malls are dying off across Toronto, and yet another retail complex in the city is now on the chopping block to make way for a large-scale multi-tower development.

The latest shopping plaza targeted for redevelopment is the property at 125 The Queensway, home to five low-rise buildings, including an LCBO, a Sobeys supermarket, and a Dollarama location.

Developer Fiera Real Estate filed plans in late March, seeking to replace the existing shopping plaza with seven Turner Fleischer Architects-designed towers rising as tall as 50 storeys.

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Plans call for the current shopping plaza buildings and surface parking to be razed and replaced with towers rising between 42 and 50 storeys, along with a 12-storey mid-rise component. 

The towers would reach heights of 50, 50, 47, 45, 45, and 42 storeys — the tallest two of the pack each rising over 164 metres — combining for almost 4,000 new residential units.

The proposed development’s residential tenure is not specified in planning documents, though the total 3,968 residential units would include a mix of apartments and street-fronting townhomes.

While it would be a massive influx of residents in a pocket of Etobicoke that feels far removed from the conglomeration of tall towers just across the Gardiner in Humber Bay, the area is well-equipped to handle a population boom in the years to come.

In addition to being located at the western terminus of the TTC 501 Queen streetcar, the proposal is a stone’s throw from the forthcoming Park Lawn GO station, justifying the proposed density under the provincially mandated Protected Major Transit Station Area surrounding the station site.

And it seems the developer is leaning into this future transit access rather than just using it as a justification for density. A minimal parking component of just 531 spaces is planned, with only 282 of them for residents. 

That means approximately seven per cent of suites would be allocated parking spaces, a remarkably low parking-to-unit ratio for a proposal in the traditionally car-dominant Etobicoke.

While parking will be in short supply, bicycle storage will not. Over 3,000 bike parking spaces are planned in the complex, with over 2,700 earmarked for residents.

This new high-density community would benefit from a new public park that would span almost 2,800 square metres at the south end of the lands, which would connect with another smaller open space that could be integrated into a future connection across the Gardiner Expressway to the community of towers to the south.

Current area residents would indeed lose their local retail plaza if plans are approved, though the project aims to retain a grocery store as a retail tenant, and has set aside space at the west end of the complex for a future food retailer.

The proposal site, immediately east of the Ontario Food Terminal, would have future views preserved thanks to the building’s provincially protected status.

However, anyone facing north would be overlooking a wastewater treatment plant, something future residents may want to take into consideration.