Creating Downtown Vaughan

March 27, 2006 - Just days after the Spadina Subway extension announcement, today's Toronto Star featured an article on "Vaughan's Downtown Dream". Planners and politicians in Vaughan, which has long declared itself as "the city above Toronto", have been hoping to create a 600 acre downtown called Vaughan Corporate Centre near the Highway 7-Jane Street area for almost a decade. With the subway extension, it looks like the dream will now become a reality.

As the City is building the Corporate Centre from scratch, downtown Vaughan has the potential to become a true walkable, mixed-use, transit-friendly city centre. Plans call for a 6.1 million square feet of both residential and commercial development, including hotels, office towers, cultural facilities, restaurants, and entertainment venues, along with medium and high density mixed types of housing (no word on whether there will be affordable housing though). Early estimates are that 30,000 people will work there and at least 5,000 will live there. Currently, the Corporate Centre is nothing more than open fields, big box stores (i.e. IKEA, AMC, Vaughan Mills), and light industries.

Now this development plan sounds great on paper, but I still have my doubts as to whether it could truly become what it wants to be. For one thing, Vaughan is still a predominately suburban community (even more so than Markham I would say). Cars rule in Vaughan - both Highway 7 and Jane Street today are 8 wide lanes of traffic. Getting to Vaughan is also quite difficult - public transit, even with the new Viva Line continues to be poor. Would the subway help? While the subway will improve access, it will take almost 6 times as long for downtown Vaughan to be completely built than the subway. Ridership on the new line will be extremely low for years and may not even be economically sustainable (note: the Vaughan Orange Viva Line has the lowest ridership among all the lines). Not to mention, will downtown Vaughan be able to attract enough businesses so that residents can "live and work" in the area? or will the city centre but nothing more than a commuters hub? Also, with multiple developers eager to build in the Corporate Centre (unlike Downtown Markham, which only has 1 developer), will there be a consistency in terms of urban design?

Well I guess time will tell. I think I have my doubts because Vaughan isn't exactly known for its good planning (Vaughan Mills anyone?). So I guess until I actually see the draft plans, I will have some reservations...