Mississauga City Centre
Mississauga City Centre is the central business district of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The district runs west-to-east from west of Confederation Parkway to east of Hurontario Street, and east-west from south of Webb Drive to Centre View Drive. The newer urban corridor developing along Confederation Parkway between Rathburn Road and Burnhamthorpe Road consists of residential highrise buildings. The city's financial district, centred along Hurontario Street and Robert Speck Parkway, is home to the Mississauga Executive Centre and One City Centre Drive, and well as other smaller office complexes.
Design and Layout
Mississauga is not a traditional city, but is a mostly suburban municipality created from the predominantly-rural Toronto Township, which was restructured into the Town of Mississauga in 1968. The present city was established by amalgamating the new town with the historic independent towns of Port Credit and Streetsville in 1974. As the fledgling city grew, several midrise condominium buildings were constructed at the corner of Hurontario Street and Burnhamthorpe Road, overlooking the then-new Square One Shopping Centre. The city centre spread northwest from the intersection over the next several decades, until the mid 2010s when the new urban centre was catalyzed by the Chicago tower and One Park Tower. As a result being a suburban downtown, the core is a modern and fully planned greenfield development, rather than a traditional city downtown which grew over a long period of time. As such, its boundaries are sharp and there is no transitional inner city between it and the surrounding suburban areas. In addition, despite Mississauga being located on Lake Ontario, the city centre is not located on or near the waterfront, but is located well inland. Instead, the city's urban waterfront is located in Port Credit, one of Mississauga's original historic townsites, roughly south along Hurontario.Originally there was an octagonal ring road encircling Square One Shopping Centre, but later changes to the street pattern as development progressed resulted in parts of it being incorporated into the present City Centre Drive and Duke of York Boulevard or being replaced by Square One Drive.
The early developments in the city centre were mostly office buildings set in the middle of parking lots or condominiums constructed in tower in the park settings, as was the typical before the new urbanism principle was applied in the city centre planning area. Two of these office developments have since been demolished and have been or are being replaced with new projects.
History
The intersection of Hurontario Street and Burnhamthorpe Road was once the site of a rural hamlet named Payne's Corners. Prior to 1973, the area was predominantly agricultural. In the 1950s, developer Bruce McLaughlin began buying up farms in the area as he envisioned the-then mostly rural Toronto Township, as Mississauga was then known, becoming a future major city with a new urban core. To get his envisioned core started, he proposed building Square One in 1969. The new core was given an additional boost that year after a fire badly damaged the newly incorporated Town of Mississauga's municipal offices in the nearby community of Cooksville, prompting the municipality to move its offices to a new building constructed on a plot of land in the area exchanged with McLaughlin for the old Cooksville property.In 1973, Square One opened, and it provided the catalyst for the development of the new city centre. Mississauga's first mayor, Martin Dobkin, as well as then-future mayor Hazel McCallion, wanted the city centre developed in Cooksville, the municipality's most central historic community, by intensification, but the popularity of the mall, enticed developers, such as Ignat Kaneff and Harold Shipp, to construct condominium and office projects around it, such as the Mississauga Executive Centre in 1976. In 1986, Shipp worked with the Mathews Corporation to open a Novotel hotel, which is today still the only hotel in the city centre.
When McLaughlin's corporation ran into financial difficulties in the late 1970s, Mayor Hazel McCallion proposed that an iconic new city hall with a large civic square be built. Groundbreaking took place in 1984 for the new facility, and it was opened in July 1987, with the Duke and Duchess of York being present at the opening ceremonies.
Buildings
Mississauga City Centre today has a large number of high-rise buildings; the most of any city core in Ontario aside from downtown Toronto itself. Additionally, it has several more under construction and planned. Most of this newer growth has occurred west of City Hall in the new urban centre, located along Confederation Parkway, in an area that was the last sector to develop but which has now become the most densely populated area in the core, and that most resembles a stereotypical downtown streetscape, with cafés, restaurants, and services lining the street.One of the earliest built and most prominent buildings in the city centre include the aforementioned City Hall. As of 2023, the tallest are the twin M1 and M2 towers. These towers are part of the larger M City development. Further east stands the residential Absolute World complex, located at the northeast corner of Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario. It consists of six towers, with its iconic main twin towers, nicknamed "the Marilyn Monroe" because of their curvy shape, standing 50 and 56 storeys. Other residential towers include Avia at Parkside Village, Square One District, The Exchange District, One Park Tower, and Chicago.