Hotel and conference centre will be built in downtown Mississauga: mayor

Plans to build a new hotel and conference centre in Mississauga’s downtown core are getting bigger.

Initially visualized as an attraction that would rise up on the southeast corner of the Living Arts Centre site to the immediate north of city hall, a new hotel/conference centre is now a project that will conceivably occupy three acres of land to both the east and north of the LAC, says Mayor Carolyn Parrish.

Parrish, who told INsauga.com last fall of her concept for such an attraction that would bring more people and energy to the City Centre area, said in a Jan. 24 interview the plan has grown in scope.

While plans are only “in the works” and no timetable has yet been put forth, the mayor envisions a yet-to-be-determined builder completing the project using the full three acres of City of Mississauga-owned land.

“It’s not just the (southeast) corner (of the LAC site), it’s a whole three acres that wraps around the LAC,” Parrish said during her most recent interview with INsauga.com.

A new hotel and convention centre at that location is a key part of Parrish’s big plans for a revitalized City Centre. It’s one of several large-scale projects the mayor hopes will come to fruition sooner rather than later.

The idea, Parrish said earlier, is to bring badly needed vibrancy back to the downtown area of Canada’s seventh-largest city.

Dozens of highrises, both condos and offices, tower over Square One, the Mississauga Civic Centre (city hall), Hazel McCallion Central Library, numerous restaurants and the LAC.

But something important is missing, observed Mississauga’s mayor, who speaks of her dream to “fix the downtown” by making it a more welcoming destination.

“The downtown is boring. We have nothing exciting going on here until the festivals start (in spring and summer),” she said last fall. “The City Centre has languished for a very long time; nothing’s happened here.”

In the meantime, the city is moving forward with plans to add some 560 new seats to the Main Auditorium in the Living Arts Centre in an effort to bring bigger and better acts to downtown Mississauga.

As she looks to spearhead a revitalization of the downtown area, Parrish also envisions a 7,500-seat soccer stadium — at an estimated cost of $32 million — and an urban school that would house kindergarten-to-Grade 8 students in the not-so-distant future.