How Toronto's condo crash derailed the 75-tower plan for Scarborough's Golden Mile

Cooper is an executive with Toronto real estate developer Dream, which had planned to start its multi-phase Golden Mile project by building a pair of towers with around 1,000 condo units. The development was among front-running projects city planners thought might break ground in 2025, though Dream had not publicly released a target date. But as the condo market has shifted, Cooper says they’re not able to advance the project to construction, for now.

“We were really hopeful we’d be able to go,” Cooper said in an interview. The company considered converting some buildings to rentals to make them more viable, he said, but ultimately it hasn’t found a way to make the math work. “We’ve submitted a site plan application. We made a lot of progress. And we’re kind of at the point where we’re saying the market just isn’t there.”

All across Golden Mile — a 113-hectare stretch of Eglinton Avenue East in Scarborough roughly between Victoria Park Avenue and Birchmount Road — the collapse of the condo market and other economic headwinds have put up roadblocks to the long-promised neighbourhood transformation.

As of 2024, around 75 new towers as high as 48 storeys were expected to be built in Golden Mile within three decades — bringing some 56,000 new residents, roughly the population of Belleville. This density boost was spurred by the promise of a new higher-capacity transit line along Eglinton. 

But Toronto’s real estate game has changed. Nowadays, developers citywide are pausing or cancelling projects in the face of dismal preconstruction sale prospects and an erosion of potential profits. And the toll felt across the Toronto region has touched down in Golden Mile — complicating a promised injection of housing as experts say much more is still needed. 

No development applications within Golden Mile have been withdrawn, city hall said in an email, but some landowners are now proposing to build fewer units or buildings in the early stages or making other revisions to their plans. Others are in a state of limbo, with city staff waiting on new submissions.

So, while the LRT is running after 15 years of delays, the mammoth overhaul of one neighbourhood along its route is now the one struggling to move.

“Real estate is about location and timing,” said Matti Siemiatycki, a University of Toronto expert in infrastructure and city planning. “In the Golden Mile, the location in the last six months has gotten better because the LRT has opened, but the timing has gotten infinitely worse because the market has tanked.”

Given how widespread the new-home market slowdown has been, Siemiatycki expects many builders will struggle to get their projects moving: “You’re going to see a domino effect: that, one after the other, they’re going to start hitting pause and changing their plans.” 

According to the GTA-based Building Industry and Land Development Association, there were 531 new home sales regionwide in February, up 16 per cent year over year but well below the 10-year average of roughly 2,220 sales. 

Developers aren’t the only ones affected, Siemiatycki added. “There’s still a huge demand for housing. It’s just that the industry can’t build at a price that people can afford.”

City planners told the Star some developers in the area are looking at adjusting their initial construction phases to build a smaller number of homes, as it may be easier to “pre-sell or prelease” around 350 new homes versus a larger development of 800 to 1,000 units. 

“A smaller phase for initial development could be more easily marketed, financed and implemented,” city planning staff wrote in a statement. “Smaller phases are also quicker to build and could generate positive momentum for future development in accordance with the overall master plans.”

New opportunities may have also opened up for landowners in the last few years, the email said, as leases on current buildings may have expired, freeing up pieces of land for redevelopment that wouldn’t have been available before.

Changing their plans may also allow developers to put off costlier infrastructure upgrades, planners said. The overall plan for Golden Mile includes new roads, community spaces and, once everything is complete, at least nine new parks.

Keeping the community benefit of the Golden Mile redevelopment is top of mind for Siemiatycki. Considerable work went into the “social mandate” of the neighbourhood plan, he said, to make sure the new development benefits the existing community, not just residents of its new towers.

“Hopefully that vision is durable and, as the building plans change, that the overall idea of what they’re planning and what it’s going to stand for remains unchanged,” he said. 

Cooper said the financial predicament for each Golden Mile site owner was unique, with some better equipped to wait out the current development climate if, for example, they have stores or offices on future development sites that are providing interim income.

“But most of these sites are probably going to have a land loan or other financing on them and that costs money,” Cooper said. “Developers are in the business of building. It’s not as if they want to sit idle, and I think that applies to the Golden Mile as well as pretty much every other site in the city.” 

Some new planning activity has still been underway. City hall planners said a new zoning and official plan change application was under review, for land at 1911-1921 Eglinton Ave. E. that includes a former Ontario courthouse.

Materials were filed last month for that proposal, which involves eight new buildings from 12 to 48 storeys and more than 2,200 homes.

Obtaining approval for a plan does not compel a landowner to proceed right away, however, and developers who secure approvals may still wait for suitable market conditions. 

Other applications have seen little movement in the last few years, including a proposal from developer and Toronto landlord Starlight to tear down a series of rental buildings on the west side of Golden Mile and replace them with upwards of 1,500 new units, a park and a new street. City planning staff said that “several matters remain outstanding” on that application, and they are waiting on a resubmitted application to amend the zoning bylaws for the land.

One longtime resident of the rental buildings still believes news could come anytime.

“I’m sure it will happen, just not yet,” said Lorraine Hogan in a text message. Hogan previously spoke to the Star in 2024 about the disruption she’d face if she lost her $1,000-per-month two-bedroom apartment in the neighbourhood where she raised her two children. 

In recent weeks, multiple levels of government have announced policy changes aimed at unsticking the new home construction sector, including efforts to reduce development charges and a $2.2-billion incentive by the federal and Ontario governments to waive HST for buyers of new houses and condos for one year. 

Cooper, earlier this month, said Dream was awaiting more detail to “digest and understand” how those policies will affect their projects.

“There’s no doubt that the market is challenging. We’re totally focused on finding a path forward for our project for the Golden Mile, because we believe the community is going to be an incredible opportunity for the city.”