The former Downsview Airport is now the biggest urban development project in North America at a projected cost of $35-billion.Northcrest Developments
Pity the children who will call YZD their home in, say, 2035. They’ll never know the joy of yelling “Car!” as they struggle to move hockey nets to the side of the road as others wrangle the bouncing tennis ball. No, in what will be Toronto’s newest, most eco-friendly neighbourhood – covering a whopping 150 hectares – the main thoroughfare will be car-free.
Should they ask their parents, however, they’ll learn that their two-kilometre-long play pad once had all kinds of traffic on it – the big, winged kind – until airport operations ceased in mid-2024.
Today, however, Downsview Airport contains only big dreams. Dreams so big, they’re hard to fathom: 10 new neighbourhoods, seven of which of will be built by Northcrest Developments (Canada Lands Company is developing an adjoining 61 hectares); an anticipated 65,000 residential units; 45,000 people working on site; 7,000 workers employed per year until the development wraps up in the 2050s; and, for Northcrest alone, a price tag of $30-billion over 30 years.
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If New York or Los Angeles ‘found’ 520 acres to develop into homes, businesses, schools and parks, there would be headlines the world over. Yet, here, despite being the largest urban redevelopment project in North America, in typical Canadian fashion, YZD is flying somewhat quietly under the radar.
Northcrest Developments was created in 2018 by the Public Sector Pension Investments Board after it purchased the land from Bombardier Aerospace (de Havilland, maker of the legendary Mosquito, Tiger Moth, and the Beaver bush plane, built the airfield in 1929 and left in 2022). And as soon as Bombardier flew off to Pearson last year, Northcrest began building their 16,000-square-foot “Experience Centre” in one of Bombardier’s old buildings on Hanover Road. Inside is a dazzling, interactive map of the proposed build-out featuring hundreds of tiny Lucite buildings of all sizes, with the old runway serving as a connecting spine. Many of the real buildings will likely be constructed of mass timber.
A rendering from Henning Larsen Architects of one of the pedestrian-only streets proposed.Henning Larsen Architects
“We do all of our public meetings in here too,” says Christopher Eby, Northcrest’s executive vice-president of corporate and public affairs. “People come and learn about the project, or they’re doing yoga classes; we offer free community programming – this doubles as a community centre before there’s a community here. But there’s such an ‘us-versus-the-city’ or ‘it’s old or it doesn’t exist’ [attitude]. So we’re trying to fill that need now.”
Physically, Northcrest is filling the old Bay 12 Hangar, which is located in what will be the first neighbourhood to break ground in 2026. And the “Hangar District” won’t be a hollow, name-only tribute to the area’s former use; no, the massive, impressive hangars will remain and be repurposed.
“The perimeter is retail … and then the employment uses are further back,” Mr. Eby explains. “And they could be digital media, film production – we’ve got film production happening in a hangar now – dance, manufacturing, creative offices. The concept is you have this atrium that draws people in and also serves as a place that people are working in, and where they get their lunch or dinner.”
We hop into a Northcrest-branded vehicle (electric, of course) and drive from the Experience Centre to Hangar 5.
“These buildings are amazing,” Mr. Eby says as communications and public relations manager Kaleigh Ambrose unlocks the tiny door to the towering structure. Inside, it’s so huge and open that it’s hard to get a sense of scale. The ceilings are 25 to 30 feet high. The back wall is so distant it makes Walmart seem cozy. The possibilities are endless.
“You could eat off the floors in these places, because aerospace is an extremely clean manufacturing process,” Mr. Eby continues. “You can’t have so much as a stray staple, because, you know, if it gets in the wrong place …”
Some of the former hangars at Downsview which will be saved and reused as community and retail spaces.Northcrest Developments
Since the hangars are joined, we walk to one that’s older – but still super-clean – and then one with a lower ceiling filled with fluorescent lights. Wondering what took place here, Ms. Ambrose quickly texts a colleague. Within a minute, she reports: “It was an old paint booth for smaller airplanes.”
And while most of old runway is blocked off on the day I visit, to stand on even a portion of it and watch as it disappears into a distant haze – it’s as long as Yonge Street from Bloor to Queen – while trying to imagine a thriving, bustling, neighbourhood (about 40 per cent rental) is surreal, to say the least. And, when a vision starts to materialize (aided by the renderings I’ve seen), I begin to worry about the long timeline, and how, sometimes, architectural standards can change, as they did at the 17.8-hectare St. Lawrence neighbourhood, built from the mid-70s to the early-1990s.
Mr. Eby, however, reassures me that there will be a “basic set” of architectural and material standards. “And that is the benefit of having a pension fund own this [that will be] the owner long-term.” So, even if Northcrest holds a competition or two for some signature towers to punctuate a neighbourhood – a very good idea in this author’s humble opinion – or invites creative nonconformists such as Partisans to design something, beyond the strange and wonderful shapes created there will be a consistency to anchor them to the background buildings.
But will people come all the way to Keele Street and Sheppard Avenue West? With direct access to two subway stations – Sheppard West and Downsview Park – the proximity of the enormous Downsview Park (Northcrest is building a great many small parks as well), and the buildup of the city of Vaughan to the north, it sure doesn’t seem as far as it used to … and feels just about right for a game of tennis ball shinny.
Editor’s note: Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Northcrest Developments.