Toronto laid its foundation stone at the Etobicoke Municipal Hall

Staff writer for Ontario Construction News

Construction began on the new Etobicoke Civic Center last week.

The building replaces the Municipal Center on Burnhamthorpe Road and the West Mall, which was built in 1958 to replace the former Etobicoke Municipal Hall.

The civic center project was awarded to MGAC Canada as the city's project management consultant and Multiplex as the general contractor.

“The new Etobicoke Civic Center is an important project that is part of a larger vision to create a downtown in Toronto's west side. I'm excited to see this important development come to life that will allow residents to live, work and play in one place,” Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Designed by Henning Larsen of Denmark and Adamson Associates Architects of Toronto as a modern civic hub, the new Etobicoke Civic Center offers more than 508,000 square feet of accessible public space with municipal office towers, podiums. level multi-purpose boardroom, childcare centre, Toronto Public Library branch, community health clinic for dental services and breastfeeding, fully equipped recreation centre, function rooms and community meeting rooms. There is an art gallery and shops leading to an open civic square with a sacred fire vessel.

A two-level parking garage will be built on a 260,000-square-foot below-grade area.

The basement will house a district energy plant operated by Enwave Energy Corporation that will power the entire Bloor-Kipling site, making it Toronto's first near-zero emissions community.

The structure also targets the Toronto Green Standard (TGS) 3, Tier 4 and is aligned with the City's TransformTO Net Zero strategy to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions in Toronto.

Located in “Block 4” of the city's Bloor-Kipling Block Plan, this allowed for the reconfiguration of the former six-point interchange or “Spaghetti Junction”. The $77 million investment to decommission Six Points opened up nearly 18 acres of city-owned land that has been divided into seven mixed-use redevelopment blocks connected by a network of streets.

Once built, the new civic center will be steps away from five residential development blocks, including 5207 Dundas St. West, which broke ground in August 2023. The sites have been identified for additional rental housing development that will deliver at least 2,781 residential units, 904 of which are residential. these will be affordable rental homes.

The centrally located civic center and surrounding residential areas will be surrounded by over 10,000 square meters of parkland and serviced by existing and planned cycle paths.

Groundbreaking for the development of the new civic center and the wider Bloor-Kipling precinct was led by the city's real estate agency CreateTO, which continues to oversee the area's current housing stock.