PICKERING’S ‘BRIDGE’ TO THE FUTURE

‘Bridge to the Future’ Pickering’s A CATALYST FOR GROWTH AND CONNECTION

The Pickering Pedestrian Bridge has rightly been described as a ‘feat of engineering,’ but as our burgeoning City Centre underscores, there’s much more to the bridge than meets the eye.

The 250-metre bridge spans 14 lanes of Hwy. 401, Canada’s busiest transportation link, six live rail tracks, and a municipal roadway.

The iconic architectural structure lights up the night sky and provides a vital link from the Pickering GO Station to our City Centre. Visitors, shoppers, patrons and employees enjoy quick, convenient and comfortable access to a Class ‘A’ LEEDGold office tower, Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) Centre for Canadian Nuclear Sustainability (CCNS) Innovation and Collaboration Space, Pickering Town Centre (PTC), restaurants and a GO Transit parking deck.

Pickering doesn’t have a defined downtown presence, but the bridge paved the way for a bold new vision which imagines a vibrant, connected, and bustling City Centre, where municipal service delivery, shopping & retail, and residential intensification come together as the heart of the city.

To fully appreciate the significance of the bridge, let’s travel back to 2006. That’s when the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) announced its intention to relocate to Toronto because it had outgrown its humble headquarters on Pickering Parkway.

Determined to save 200 valued jobs, Mayor Ryan shared with MPAC his vision for an office tower. Three years later, the ‘Class A’ office tower, with direct access to Hwy. 401 and overlooking the GO Station, began to rise. The $30-million office tower offers pristine views of Lake Ontario and became the new home of MPAC, and valued tenants like OPG.

Meanwhile, a pedestrian bridge that crossed Hwy. 401 had been in the planning stages for more than a decade but never had the required support to advance beyond the conceptual stage. That was, until the City successfully lobbied the federal and provincial governments, who gave their stamps of approval through stimulus funding packages that had been created to counter the global recession of 2010.

“I was always adamant that the City would not build a bridge to nowhere,” Mayor Ryan said at the time. “It had to serve a higher purpose than what was originally conceived. And now, we’ve accomplished a much greater feat. The pedestrian bridge represents a new era for Pickering and truly stands as our bridge to the future.”

It wasn’t long until GO Transit (now Metrolinx) committed $20 million to build a 700-vehicle GO Transit/office parking deck at the office tower, which was developed by 20 Vic Management. Its principal applauded Mayor Ryan for “getting all of the project stakeholders, including senior levels of government, to buy into his compelling and sweeping city-building vision.”

The Pickering Pedestrian Bridge was completed in 2018. That fall, the City of Pickering worked with the owners of Pickering Town Centre (PTC) to develop a bold and exciting vision of a brand new City Centre that would see the redevelopment of the lands on the east side of PTC and immediately south of Esplanade South. While we have deferred the project at this time to better evaluate the financial impacts, we still believe in and are committed to the vision of creating a dynamic, urban, sustainable, and walkable downtown where our community can come together to live, work, learn, shop, dine, play, and be entertained.

With the direct connection to the Pickering GO Station Durham College and Centennial College established a joint learning centre at the north terminus of the pedestrian bridge to attract students from across the Greater Toronto Area. When it opened its doors, it was Pickering’s very first post-secondary institution. Unfortunately, like many areas of the economy, the postsecondary sector was hard hit by COVID-19 and the colleges shuttered the centre amid their transition to a remote delivery model.

However, the coveted location didn’t remain empty for long, becoming home to the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Sustainability (CCNS) in fall 2020. Among other things, the CCNS describes itself as an innovation hub to lead and collaborate on sustainable and socially responsible plans for the end of the nuclear lifecycle.

Last year, the Guinness Book of World Records named the Pickering Pedestrian Bridge the longest enclosed people crossing in the world, reinforcing the fact that it is indeed a feat of engineering. The bridge is also fulfilling its destiny and laying the groundwork for a bold new future. “We’re creating something special here,” Mayor Ryan says of City Centre. “We’re creating a legacy. This is something we can all be proud of.”