Ontario mall will be completely demolished and replaced by futuristic towers

Malls across the region are dropping like flies, or perhaps Toronto sports teams during big moments, as property owners race to capitalize on valuable land amid a dwindling brick-and-mortar retail landscape.

The latest proposed victim in this regional Mallpocalypse is the Shoppes on Steeles, a mid-sized shopping centre at Steeles and Highway 404 in Markham, just across the street from Toronto's northern city limit.

A joint venture between developers Minett Capital, Streamliner Properties, and Kerbel Group, the partnership has hired architects Arcadis to devise a futuristic plan for replacing the current mall with 11 towers and a pair of mid-rises as tall as 59 storeys.

The project is proposed to be constructed in phases that would allow the site to maintain a retail presence through the redevelopment.

This includes a first phase dubbed the "retail" precinct at the site's western edge along Don Mills Road, which would house six towers containing retail bases and over 1,350 residential units.

The next phase of the project will introduce vast park spaces at the interior of the site, and is aptly known as the "Park Precinct."

This area of the development is to include three more towers as tall as 50 storeys fronting a sprawling park, though only around half of this space would be constructed during the second phase.

At the east end of the lands, a third phase known as the "Residential Precinct" will add to the second phase's park space for a combined greenspace of over 10,000 square metres.

Four further towers in this phase rising as tall as 59 storeys would be the tallest in the community.

This proposal marks just the latest in a growing wave of mall redevelopments in the 416 and surrounding 905 regions.

The trend to delete mall space and replace massive surface parking lots with mixed-use development is being felt the hardest in Toronto, where soaring land values and a dying retail scene are forcing the hands of property owners.

Toronto malls with planned or active redevelopments now include Humbertown Shopping Centre, Westside Mall, Scarborough Town Centre, Yorkdale, Sherway Gardens, Fairview Mall, the ongoing redevelopment of Galleria Mall, Yorkgate Mall, Agincourt Mall, Atrium on Bay, Dufferin Mall, Centrepoint Mall, Cloverdale Mall, Malvern Town Centre and Jane Finch Mall.