This excerpt is from an article published in The Toronto Star on December 18, 2010
By Donna Laporte
Quadrangle Architects is used to winning awards, but the latest one is particularly sweet.
“We got an urban intensification award for building on a greenfield site,” says Sheldon Levitt, as he shows me around what is to become the new Downtown Markham.
The firm, known for its infill work, had an interesting challenge.
“Here, there was no context,” says Levitt, a principal at Quadrangle who is leading the project, recognized for a Markham Design Excellence Award. Quadrangle was hired to design the first nine residential and mixed-use buildings for the project. It would be setting the tone, instead of fitting buildings into an established urban scheme.
Historically, downtowns have been organic, springing up building by building, where commerce develops, usually around a port or a rail station.
But in Markham, there was no “there” there.
Incorporated in 1971, Markham is an amalgam of three villages: Thornhill, Unionville and east Markham. Each had its own main street, but there was no single downtown.
When The Remington Group, which had owned the 98-hectare site for many years, announced plans in 2006 for a $3 billion sustainable mixed-use development in the Warden Ave./Highway 7 area, it was based on the principles of new urbanism: walkability, access to public transit and sustainability, where housing tucks up against the sidewalk and stores, schools and parks are nearby.
The province’s Smart Growth plan, which calls for intensification, released just a week before Downtown Markham was announced, dovetailed nicely.
Yet, the original plan for the site fell short, because “it was a traditional land use layout,” says Randy Peddigrew, senior land development vice president for The Remington Group, the developer. “What we were creating was an industrial business park on the south side of Enterprise (Blvd.),” which roughly cuts the site in two.
