AT THIS AS
JUST ANOTHER
DEVELOPMENT.
I FEEL A REAL
RESPONSIBILITY
HERE TO DO
SOMETHING
THAT WILL
BE FOR THE
BETTERMENT
OF THE
COMMUNITY."
- Mitch Goldhar
VAUGHAN
"I DON’T LOOK
include more than 1.5-million
square feet of commercial office
space, 750,000 square feet of new
retail space, 12,000 residences,
unique cultural spaces, hotels and
entertainment venues. It is anticipated that more than 20,000 people
will be passing through the VMC
Mobility Hub daily.
Earlier this year, the Mayor announced at the annual Vaughan
Chamber of Commerce Luncheon,
that a new 265,000-square-foot
SmartReit mixed-use office project
which will also feature a state-ofthe-art YMCA Centre of Community, City of Vaughan public
library and recreation space, would
be opening in 2019. The anchor
tenant for the new office tower will
be PwC. And this October, KPMG
will be opening its doors in the
VMC in a new 325,000-squarefoot office building. In addition,
EXPO City, by Cortel Developments has completed its second
residential condominiums and
Liberty Development is building
the first residential mixed project
with 200,000 square feet of office
space, two residential towers and
30,000 square feet of commercial
space. The City’s new downtown
is taking shape.
W RIT T EN
BY DAV ID
SEIG EL
The Mayor’s work in city-building
is aligned with the local landowners
in the VMC. Mitch Goldhar, owner
of SmartCentres, has been integral
in the development since purchasing the first 100 acres in the mid
1990s. “The VMC is not a suburban
development like we are used to
seeing,” said Goldhar in a 2014
interview with the Toronto Star.
“It is not an area of low or mid-rise
buildings that may eventually give
way to increased densities (taller
buildings) through redevelopment
over a generation or two. Here we
are starting with the end product – a
high-density, fully urban, mixed-use
community.” Goldhar has gathered
a number of partners for different
aspects of the development, including publicly traded Calloway Real
Estate Income Trust, as well as longtime developers Rudy Bratty and
Silvio DeGasperis. “I don’t look at
2016 \ Celebrate Vaughan
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