5 Reasons Why Eglinton is The New Bloor

Eglinton has long been the geographical centre of Toronto but Bloor street (and it’s sister street Danforth Avenue) has always been seen as the symbolic centre because of the subway and the infrastructure that it has brought this street over the last 50 years. All that is about the change because the Crosstown Expressway is going to be a game-changer.

Here are 5 reasons why Eglinton is the new Bloor.

1. Eglinton is getting a subway.

Just like Bloor Street, Eglinton is getting a subway.

It”s no secret that the Eglinton LRT is under construction now, and is to be completed by 2020. Eventually it will link Kennedy road in Scarborough all the way to Pearson airport. The LRT will be underground from Keele to Laird. In other words, if you are a real estate investor, this 9Km stretch is the one you will definitely want to keep an eye on over the next 5-10 years. Investing close to transit nodes, especially rapid transit, will be increasingly important as the city continues to grow in population and sprawl and gridlock increase.

2. Condo development is about to explode on Eglinton

Right now Eglinton from east to west is a real hodge podge of good and bad, ugly and beautiful, expensive areas and dilapidated areas, suburban and urban. With the LRT going in, this road will become the new centre of the city, with more and more people moving through the corridor every day. It will become more urbanized like Bloor street, starting at Yonge street and moving out.

As soon as the City announced that the LRT would be going in, developers from around the region started looking for sites to build on Eglinton. Yonge and Eglinton is naturally where the heart of this development is taking place with projects like E Condos, 155 Redpath, 2221 Yonge, 30 Roe, 101 Erskine to name a few in the pipeline right now.

Looking to Eglinton Avenue West, The Hub by Empire Communities is launching now and is going to be a great example of how some of the lesser developed stretches of Eglinton will be transformed for the better thanks in part to the existence of the the LRT.

3. Eglinton is getting thousands of new jobs

Much of the development along Eglinton will create new jobs. The LRT construction alone will employ thousands for the next 7 years. Employers in urban centres are increasingly locating their new office spaces where their employees want to live or where they already live. The South Financial Core is a great example of this. The same thing will happen at Yonge and Eglinton. First the condos go in, then the retail follows, then the office towers will follow. Yonge and Eglinton has the potential to be a major centre for employment just like Yonge and Bloor.

4. The City is planning on making Eglinton the centre of Toronto

One of the strongest arguments as to why Eglinton is the new Bloor (or will be soon), is that the Chief city planner wants it that way. Jennifer Keesmaat has said in reference to the Bloor street comparisons, “We’re really going to start to see the centre of gravity shifting”. In fact, the crosstown LRT will make Eglinton not just Toronto’s geographical centre, but more it’s symbolic centre.

5. Big money is already in and around Eglinton

Posh neighbourhoods like Leaside, Forest Hill, and of course the Yonge and Eglinton area itself all border on Eglinton Avenue. With these areas comes high-end dining and shopping, with more retailers and restauranteurs looking for space in these areas all the time. Demographically these areas are not all that different from the Yorkville/Yonge&Bloor corridor, but for the most not yet a destination in the same sense that Yorkville is. But this will all change in the next decade. Developers are planning on putting hundreds of millions into projects along Eglinton area to ride the boom that is about to happen.

 

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