We have a big idea to transform retail. What if shopping centres pushed beyond the boundaries of just shopping to better connect the city and its amenities? This is our aim at Square One District where we take premium retail and enrich it into cultural hubs where people can shop, but also live, work, and play.
SQ1 District is a visionary mixed-use community driven by a clear purpose: to connect a future Mississauga and its people through human-centric design. As the largest mixed-use development in Canada with 18,000 new residential units and 3 million square feet of workspace, Oxford is effectively constructing a modern town square within the City of Mississauga. Square One’s master plan will deliver a place where business, life and leisure come together as one.
Working alongside our partners at the City of Mississauga enables our team to understand and align with the economic goals and priorities of the city and region. We aim to create a thriving environment that connects commerce, culture and community to foster economic vitality and the well-being of the region. A recent collaboration with the city resulted in the opening of IDEA Square One within our shopping centre. IDEA Square One will be a critical part of the city’s innovation ecosystem which is made up of industry, government, education and providers of space and programs that support innovation. With its central location, IDEA Square One will provide a 4,300 square-foot connected space that will be a collaborative core for entrepreneurs, start-ups and scale-ups in Mississauga.
To get a better idea of the evolving retail real estate landscape, we sat down with Sherif Masood, Head of Asset Management, Canada, to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and future of entrepreneurship at Square One.
Q&A:
How did this project come to be?
Sherif Masood:
At Oxford we invest in community relationships. Square One has grown to act as the nerve center for Mississauga and because of that we have worked closely with the City to meet the needs of the community. This relationship with the City of Mississauga blossomed into conversations on how we can better support the city’s entrepreneurship pipeline. We uncovered through City funded research studies that there was a serious need for a collaborative space for entrepreneurs to connect and seek mentorship and we got to work.
What challenges did you face?
SM:
We are fortunate to have worked with such fantastic partners that any hurdles we encountered in the four years we’ve been working on this project were largely avoided. In the macro sense we have been taking measures to transform Square One into the modern ‘town square’, well before the pandemic accelerated retail trends.
Wins like IDEA are proof points of our vision for the Square One District to add value across every life stage of our customers. For instance, we asked ourselves questions like ‘how do we better support families by implementing day care services?’ Or ‘can we integrate higher education outposts into our shopping centres?’, ‘can we offer cooking classes or pottery classes to retirees?’. These are approaches we have taken action on by bringing TriOS College to Square One or transforming a former Target location that now includes an Oxford curated and managed food hall, the Food District. IDEA at Square One is yet another example of our town square vision for this site.
How will entrepreneurs benefit from IDEA at Square One?
SM:
On the Oxford side we’re providing both the literal and figurative ‘room to grow’. We will be open and collaborative in extending our resources and connections at Oxford to entrepreneurs at IDEA. Our hope is to help small businesses through their journey all the way from startup to storefront or expanded office space.
How does IDEA fit into the larger plans for Square One District?
SM:
SQ1 District is a visionary mixed-use community driven by a clear purpose: to connect a future Mississauga and its people through human-centric design. As the largest mixed-use development in Canada with 18,000 new residential units and 3 million square feet of workspace, Oxford is effectively constructing a modern town square within the City of Mississauga. Square One’s master plan will deliver a place where business, life and leisure come together as one.
Today the site at Square One is over two million square feet of retail on 130 acres of land, with the retail generating sales over a billion dollars of sales at $1,226 per square foot. We see an opportunity with growing population density, demand for housing choice, and a need for centralized office space to meet all these demands in a truly downtown experience at Square One. When we purposefully blur the lines of retail, residential, and office and put that into a growing community, we can deliver amazing creative outputs just like we’re seeing at IDEA.
What are you and the team most proud of?
SM:
These projects, sometimes you wish they could be done in six months or a year, but that’s often not realistic. We were really able to achieve this project through the multi-disciplinary team here at Oxford – development, marketing, leasing, property management, and asset management. I’m proud to work alongside these people who love solving problems like we did here at Square One. I’m proud of the resiliency and the relationships we were able to build.
We have a big idea to transform retail. What if shopping centres pushed beyond the boundaries of just shopping to better connect the city and its amenities? This is our aim at Square One District where we take premium retail and enrich it into cultural hubs where people can shop, but also live, work, and play.
IDEA Grand Opening Event [May 2nd 2023]