Square One’s vertical decade

A decade ago, City Centre was a shopping mall ringed by parking lots. Today it’s a real skyline — the curving Absolute Towers everyone calls “the Marilyn Monroe buildings,” a growing cluster of condos, and an LRT line stitching it into the region. Mississauga decided to build itself a downtown, vertically, and it mostly worked.

For buyers, City Centre is the city’s most accessible door into urban living. It’s condo-first, which keeps the entry price well below the detached streets around it, and it trades a backyard for amenities, walkability, and lock-and-leave convenience. If your ideal Saturday is coffee downstairs and no lawn to mow, this is the place.

A mall and a parking lot a decade ago; a skyline today. Mississauga simply built its downtown upward.

The honest caveat is that it’s still becoming a true all-day downtown rather than just a place to sleep and shop. Cooksville, right next door, offers more transitional value and its own GO connection — a little rougher around the edges today, a little more upside tomorrow.