Thread by @Fleischmarket

A Friday afternoon transit-oriented development 🧵!
The Yonge subway extension won't open for almost 10 years but was announced in 2008 and the sheer quantum of mixed use development already in the pipeline for this small section of #thornhill is astounding. 1/15

I'll focus on the York Region side of things but first, let's not ignore the proposal to redevelop Centerpoint Mall, which is at Yonge and Steeles, but on the Toronto side of the border. That's, oh, 8,500 housing units in 18 buildings as high as 50 storeys. 2/15

Just across the street, on the Vaughan side, at the Yonge-Steeles corner, there's a proposal for 3 towers up to 65 storeys, with 1,900 units. It's currently at the LPAT. 3/15

Kind of wrapping around it is this proposal for four towers, up to 60 storeys and 2,620 units. Nothing is proposed yet for the northeast corner, an Esso station purchased by Times Group, but it'll likely be of similar scale. Another 2,000-ish units? We'll find out soon! 4/15

And just north of that, a 20 and 40 storey tower, proposed by Chestnut Hill, with about 650 residential units. 5/15

Anyway, right next door, say "bye bye Sisley Honda!" and hello to two more towers - 52 and 40 storeys and another 1,100 housing units.
Oh, and a block east of that Markham Esso station is a more modest 2 towers with about 500 units. 6/15

There's another plaza just a few doors further west at 180 Steeles West where Mizrahi is proposing 6 towers, as high as 54 storeys, with another 2,100 housing units.
And that's it for active developments right at Yonge-Steeles! At least as of today! 7/15

Moving north, one of the newest proposals is to replace the 7.4ha Roy Foss auto mall with 18 towers with about 4,500 residential units. So, that's pretty big! 8/15

Just across the street Terra Bonna is proposing this 30 storey with 330 units, But they're purpose-built rental! Yay! 9/15

If we journey north to the future site of the recently announced Royal Orchard subway station, there's a proposal by Greenpark to turn this sprawling plaza into 4 more towers, up to 59 storeys with 1,560 units. 10/15

Smaller in scale, but actually under construction, is 8188 Yonge Street, a baby, at 10 storeys! 11/15

And if you've been following the news you know the Province has already used MZOs to approve 40,000 units in more than 60 towers as high as 80 storeys surrounding the Bridge and High Tech subway stations. I suspect it'll take a while, like 20-30 years, to build all those. 12/15

And that's everything proposed or approved, as of today. It adds up to nearly 70,000 housing units in the pipeline, which is around 110,000 new residents. By comparison, North York Centre has around 85,000 jobs and residents; and I'm not even counting jobs in all these. 13/15

If you add in all the other development-ready properties along this corridor and the balance of the Urban Growth Centre lands in Markham and Richmond Hill (another 20,000 units each?) and there's still the Toronto side of Steeles and, well, it's A LOT of intensification... 14/15

...along a mere 4.5km stretch of Yonge. And, yes, a lot of "yellowbelt" will be untouched but any way you slice it, it's massive change. And clearly 50 is the new 30 when it comes to tower heights.
Things are going to look different, even before the subway opens in 2031.
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