Tribute Communities and Secure Capital have submitted pre-submission applications for official plan and zoning bylaw amendments to the Toronto-area City of Pickering for an ambitious redevelopment of the Brookdale Centre shopping plaza.

The partners are working with architectural firm Turner Fleischer and proposing to develop a multi-phased, mixed-use residential development consisting of six buildings containing 14 residential towers ranging in height from 17 to 35 storeys at 1101A, 1105 and 1163 Kingston Rd. 

This would include 5,238 residential units, 76,951 square feet of retail and commercial space, and a 7,707-square-foot day-care facility. There would also be 67,135 square feet of privately owned public space and 47,986 square feet of public parkland.

A public east-west road would connect Walnut Lane and Dixie Road.

“The City of Pickering, in the last couple of years, initiated and approved a secondary plan for long stretches of Kingston Road, including these lands,” Tribute vice-president of land development Steve Deveaux told RENX. “On each of those, they approved an overall density cap and height cap and other development standards that would dictate the redevelopment of those lands, including general locations of roads and parks.

"So in following the lead of the city, all we have done was make a zoning application to bring our lands into conformity with the city-initiated and -approved secondary plan.”

Current use of the site

Tribute and Secure paid $71 million for the property, which includes a necessity-based retail power centre comprising 226,747 square feet of gross leasable area, as well as about 3.4 acres of land already zoned for residential and related uses.

It was acquired from KingSett Capital’s Canadian Real Estate Income Fund LP in early 2021.

Brookdale Centre is directly across Highway 401 from the Pickering GO Transit station and transit hub. It’s anchored by Home Depot, Food Basics, Michaels and Shoppers Drug Mart, while there are also several smaller retail, commercial and office tenants.

A public open house to discuss the proposed development will be held May 30 at 6 p.m. at Pickering’s Chestnut Hill Developments Recreation Complex.

Deveaux said the project is still at the beginning of the approvals process, so he can’t estimate any timelines for the project moving forward, but he noted the City of Pickering is easy to work with.

“We have long-term leases in place with the majority of our tenants, so there's no immediate plan to actually operationalize what we hope will be our zoning approval on the land,” Deveaux said. “With all the existing leases we have on the land, we won't be developing any time in the near future.”

Other future Tribute developments

Pickering-headquartered Tribute has been around for more than 40 years and has built more than 40,000 homes and condominium units across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

Tribute has a number of other GTA multifamily developments in the pre-construction phase, including partnerships with Greybrook Realty Partners for projects: at the corner of Avenue and Davenport roads west of Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood; and one each on The Queensway and Jopling Avenue South in Etobicoke.

Deveaux said the Yorkville project was approved by Toronto city council, but appealed by someone in the neighbourhood and he’s waiting for a hearing to be scheduled. The Etobicoke projects are going through the site-plan submission process. 

“We do have others that are at different stages of negotiation and things like that, but I don’t really want to put them out there yet,” Tribute chief financial officer Gus Stavropoulos told RENX of other proposed developments and the company's acquisition pipeline.

Despite the current hardships facing the GTA condominium market, Stavropoulos believes in its resiliency.

“Long-term, it's bullish,” Stavropoulos said of his view. “Short-term, it's got its challenges and we're all feeling that now.”