Soaring towers with hotel and condos to rise tall in Ontario city's skyline

A high-flying residential development could soon join the ever-changing skyline of Vaughan, just north of Toronto.

A recent application filed with the City of Vaughan aims to introduce a pair of towers rising 55 and 50 storeys to a site a couple blocks northeast of Vaughan Metropolitan Centre subway station on the TTC's Line 1.

MPAR Developments has signed on architects SvN to redevelop a property at 60 Talman Court, a site at the end of a cul-de-sac street currently home to a manufacturing facility, and surrounded by low-density office and industrial buildings.

If the plan is approved as currently proposed, new towers will sprout from this site reaching heights of 183.5 and 167.5 metres, which would rank among some of the tallest buildings in Vaughan if completed today.

This height would come with a significant boost in residential density for the area, with the plan seeking to introduce 933 new homes across both towers, split between 438 rental units and 495 condos.

But this isn't just your standard suburban residential-only complex, and the developer seems keen on integrating these buildings into the evolving local urban fabric with a mix of uses in a shared base joining the towers.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the plan is a proposed 225-room hotel component, along with a mix of commercial and medical office spaces, including space for the Elspeth Heyworth Centre for Women, that would maintain employment lands at this location.

The project also leans into existing infrastructure with a limited parking component of just 379 residential parking spaces, along with 140 for visitors, 59 serving the hotel component, and 32 for office tenants.

The majority of residents and visitors to the complex would be expected to rely on the nearby subway station as their primary means of getting around the region — a philosophy that would be very advisable for other proposed buildings in this fledgling downtown to adopt.

The unprecedented growth reshaping the area around Vaughan Metropolitan Centre subway station would have seemed unthinkable just a decade and a half earlier.

Private developers have concentrated vast resources on the area in the years leading up to and following the subway extension's 2017 opening, transforming an area once dominated by empty fields and bland business parks into a fledgling downtown that seems to have a real shot at success.

Sure, it's mostly shaping up to be a bedroom community of commuters with a heavy imbalance of residential units to employment lands, but the new Vaughan Metropolitan Centre promises to boast one of Ontario's most impressive skylines once all is said and done.