[URBAN NOTE] "Mega-projects reshaping Mississauga sprawl"

[rfmcdonald]

San Grewal at the Toronto Star describes how Mississauga's transformation is starting to get attention outside of Canada.

At an international biotechnology conference in Philadelphia last year, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie heard that a Brazilian multinational pharmaceutical company was looking to set up an operation in New Jersey.

“So I pitched them on the GTA — Mississauga,” says Crombie, talking about her city’s growing confidence as a global player, while an unprecedented number of multibillion-dollar projects get set to launch in Canada’s sixth largest city.

Crombie went to Brazil and met with officials of the company, Biolab. “They rolled out the red carpet. Then they grilled me on Mississauga,” she says.

After hearing about the LRT project along Mississauga’s central commercial corridor, a new institute of management and innovation and a new medical research facility at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus, as well as a number of large, vertical residential projects in the city, Biolab was sold. It is investing $56 million in a new Mississauga research and development facility.