From Vision to Reality: The Story Behind Etobicoke's New Civic Centre

On April 10, 2024, the City of Toronto held a ground-breaking ceremony for the new Etobicoke Civic Centre (ECC) at 3755 Bloor Street West.

As a new state-of-the-art civic hub, the new ECC will feature more than 508,000 square feet of accessible public-facing space including municipal office towers, a multi-purpose council chamber, a child care centre, a new Toronto Public Library branch, a public health clinic for dental services and breastfeeding, a fully equipped recreation centre, ceremonial rooms, public meeting rooms, an art gallery and retail spaces, all leading out to an open civic square with a Sacred Fire Vessel and two-level parking.

The facility is an integral component in the City’s vision for the development of Etobicoke Centre as a vibrant mixed-use community; a vision that is steeped in more than 30 years of history.

In 1990, the City of Etobicoke Official Plan envisioned the creation of a new urban centre and the reconfiguration of the Six Points Interchange at the intersection of Bloor-Dundas-Kipling, historically referred to as the Spaghetti Junction. Many Toronto residents will remember the Westwood Theatre that once occupied the site. The theatre closed its doors in 1998 and presented the City with a significant opportunity to reconfigure the road network to unlock the site and deliver a new complete community.

The reconfiguration of the road network resulted in the creation of seven mixed-use development blocks over almost 18 acres of City-owned land, which will become home to a new livable community, with the new ECC at its core. The ECC is located on ‘Block 4’ of the City’s Bloor-Kipling Block Plan. As a partner on this project, CreateTO is proud to have led many aspects of the work that brought the project to this stage.

Following the City’s visioning phase, Build Toronto (now part of CreateTO) supported the City through planning policies to include excellent transit accessibility and a concentration of jobs, housing and services for this new community. CreateTO facilitated a master planning exercise, which was completed in 2014, to define built forms, densities and infrastructure opportunities, all to support the Six Points Interchange Reconfiguration Class Environmental Assessment Study.

The City invested $77 million in an infrastructure transformation to reconfigure the Six Points Interchange. The vision for the area also included transit infrastructure upgrades to the Kipling Mobility Hub and the TTC’s Islington Station, and the relocation of the Etobicoke Civic Centre from 399 The West Mall to Bloor-Kipling.

In 2019, City Council approved the Housing Now Initiative, which initially included 11 sites across the city, including Bloor-Kipling.

In 2021, CreateTO took the first development block to market, selecting the Kilmer Group and Tricon Residential to develop Block One, located at 5207 Dundas Street West. Construction on the site is currently under way.

Together with the City, CreateTO took the ECC project delivery through the approvals process. We also negotiated a deal with Enwave Energy Corporation to provide district energy to the ECC and all of the development blocks within the community, making this development Toronto’s first near-zero emissions community.