Community

Why Invest in New Condos in Downtown Markham?

By Condos HQ - Dec 21,2022

Downtown Markham is one of the most significant master-planned megadevelopments in the works for the General Toronto Area. Building is already well underway in this semi-established district but plenty of new construction will follow and downtown Markham will eventually contain ten thousand residences, many of them in new pre-construction condo buildings. The Downtown Markham plan is a major opportunity for Markham to change its image from a sleepy suburb to something a bit more urban and dynamic. Whatever the current fluctuation in the housing market, this area is worth a second look for those on the hunt for new pre-construction condos as downtown Markham has many “fundamentals” working in its favour.

Other suburbs like Brampton, Mississauga and Vaughan are in the process of building their own downtowns. All this urban-suburban intensification is coming thanks to rapid population growth and the modern desires of those living in Toronto’s suburbs. 905ers (Toronto’s suburban area code) want to have an urban setting near their homes partly because Toronto’s downtown is simply too far and inaccessible. That said, some of these efforts will be more successful than others. Downtown Mississauga is virtually guaranteed success thanks to the significance of that city and the well established area that is being developed. Let’s compare Mississauga and Markham.

The case for Markham’s downtown is that Markham is a genuine “high tech” hub with plenty of employers and high paying jobs located in the city. Yes, downtown Mississauga is lucky to have a large outpost of Sheridan College already in its midst and other colleges nearby. But downtown Markham hopes to create a similar ecosystem as a campus of York University will open there in 2024. Eventually the Yonge-University subway line will reach Markham, and while it won’t be in the immediate vicinity of downtown Markham, this new transit investment will further the wider region’s connectivity to Markham and York Region as a whole. Downtown Mississauga is not on a subway line either and one advantage that downtown Markham will have is that a GO Station (Unionville GO) is already within the planned area. Click here to check out new pre-construction condos in Markham.

Downtown Markham’s proximity to the Markham neighbourhood of Unionville is not just another detail. Unionville is home to Markham’s historic mainstreet and is the established, leafy residential area you’d expect. Future residents of downtown Markham who tire of their shiny new modern surroundings will be able to wander up Main Street and take advantage of this quaint setting complete with copious low-rise restaurants and boutique retail. South Unionville is another portion of this historic area that will be easily at hand for any resident of downtown Markham. As a final point of comparison with downtown Mississauga, proximity to Unionville is informative. There is no equivalently cute mainstreet in proximity to Square One.

The presence of a GO Station from which residents of downtown Markham will be able to transit to downtown Toronto in forty five minutes will make this district quite the connected community indeed. Downtown Markham will be the perfect spot for an ambitious young urban professional, younger couple or young family who want to take advantage of both the Markham and Toronto labour markets. Downtown Markham is very close to the high tech office district on either side of Highway 404. But while transit will be readily available in downtown Markham, this is still the suburbs which means that relative ease of getting around by car is a major benefit. Luckily, downtown Markham is bordered by Highway 7 and Highway 407. Drivers can also access Scarborough (and the rest of Toronto nearby) easily as Birchmount Road passes underneath Highway 407 meaning downtown Markham is integrated into Toronto at a fine grain level. 

The list of companies already located inside or within easy distance of downtown Markham is impressive: AMD, Phillips, Toshiba, General Electric, Oracle, Huawei, Seneca, ADC, Xerox, Ceridan, Asus, Lenovo, Digital Realty, Johnson and Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Honeywell, Jonas, Worley Parsons, Under Armour, General Motors, Allstream, and Idexx Laboratories. Not to mention future employers that will be attracted to this district, to say nothing of the new campus of York university discussed earlier. This new outpost of a highly reputable post-secondary institution will serve ten thousand students and be home to twenty degree specialties (with emphasis on tech and life sciences).

That a large number of highly competitive international employers have located in Markham is not surprising as the city has earned an excellent reputation as a place to do business. Markham is known to be one of the most diverse places in the entire General Toronto Area and it has a very well educated population with sixty percent of Markham residents possessing post-secondary education (the loftiest total in the region). Markham has a higher than average median income and the lowest commercial and industrial tax rates in the GTA. All these factors have made Markham the “high tech capital” of the region and a prosperous environment more generally.

Other parts of the downtown Markham context include the commercial strip that already exists in the western end of the district, access to York Region VIVA transit all the way through the development, a state of the art athletic facility in the form of Markham Pan Am Centre, Bill Crothers Secondary School (a large freshly-opened highschool) and proximity to Rouge Valley National Park. It’s clear that future residents of new pre-construction condo developments in downtown Markham will not lack for amenities. 

Another thing that residents of downtown Markham will not lack for is places to shop. The list of consumer hubs in the immediate area and wider vicinity is striking. Markham Town Square at Highway 7 and Warden Avenue, First Markham Place, Costco Wholesale, New Kennedy Square and of course Pacific Mall (easily accessed by just driving south on Birchmount or Kennedy Road). Thanks to its large concentration of Chinese-Canadians Markham is famous for its high quality Asian food and quality grub can be picked up at countless outlets in the majority of these spots. Residents of downtown Markham certainly won’t go hungry and that’s pretty important, right?