A Toronto developer has his sights set on transforming an old, abandoned airport into a thriving urban hub. Once a popular air base, Downsview Airport will become a $22 billion project that will bring new businesses, public parks, and housing to as many as 55,000 residents. The developer behind the project is calling it “the largest project in North America.”
Downsview Airport covers approximately 370 acres and was originally 1929 and During World War II it served as a Canadian Air Force base. In more recent times it has served as home to Bombardier, one of the world’s largest airlines. The site was sold in 2018 for $635 million and is currently being redeveloped.
Northcrest Developers, the company behind the project, envisions a vibrant urban centre that will retain many of the original airport’s architectural amenities, including the runway and 11 airplane hangars. “Over the coming decades, we will transform these largely undeveloped sites into a series of vibrant neighbourhoods, interconnected and featuring a range of housing options, new jobs in growing industries, new business opportunities, access to parks, and community facilities and services, creating an exciting new destination for Toronto,” the company’s website states.
As an example of how the original airport infrastructure will be incorporated into the DNA of the new project, the developers want to turn the runway into a walkable promenade that will connect people to the seven neighborhoods planned for the project. At the same time, the former airplane hangars could become space where businesses could operate, one Northcrest executive told Business Insider. The developers also claim the project will create as many as 40,000 new jobs.
A lot of people have been trying to build new cities lately, especially celebrities (like Kanye West and Akon) and wealthy Bay Area tech executives (California Forever) who are trying to pour money into new urban projects. Too often, these plans fail, because there’s often an insurmountable gap between the developer’s ambitions and the viable reality.
But the Downsview project, unlike many others, is being built on existing infrastructure that would otherwise have been bulldozed. It also has a more realistic timeline than some of the more fanciful projects announced in recent years. The first “phase” of the Downsview project is scheduled to be completed by 2026, but developers expect the urban space to be fully completed for another 30 years.
