For now, the 27.3-acre site at 420 South Service Road East in Oakville is a storage yard for shipping containers and vehicles, permitted under an interim zoning by-law. Over the coming years, The Rose Corporation plans to turn it into about 5,600 homes across 14 buildings, and the first building is planned as purpose-built rental.[1]

The project is a useful case study in how suburban master plans work in the Greater Toronto Area, and why rental is increasingly the first phase rather than an afterthought.

The site and the plan

The land, just east of Trafalgar Road, is the former General Electric manufacturing site. Rose bought it about two years ago for $45 million. According to Rose president Dan Berholz, GE had considered developing the land itself but chose to sell to an experienced developer it trusted to integrate the site into the community.[1]

At full build-out, the plan calls for:[1]

  • About 5,600 homes in 14 buildings on four development blocks.
  • About 180,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and commercial space, scaled up in later blocks as the resident population grows.
  • About five acres of parks and open space.

A heritage building façade on the site will be moved a short distance to make way for a provincial transportation project. The design team includes Graziani + Corazza Architects, the Danish landscape firm SLA, and the UK-based Allies and Morrison.[1]

Approved, but not ready

Oakville council unanimously approved the official plan and zoning amendments in July. Rose development vice-president David Bannerman told RENX that a lot of work remains: a draft plan of subdivision, site plan approval and building permits, all depending on servicing work with Halton Region and floodplain management with Conservation Halton.[1]

That sequence is typical of large brownfield sites, and it's where much of the schedule risk lies. Rezoning sets what can be built. Servicing determines when.

Rose is targeting late 2027 to start construction of the first phase, a purpose-built rental apartment.[1] Bannerman said every building and block will be complete with what it needs at each stage, rather than waiting for later phases to fill in amenities.[1]

Why start with rental

Starting a master plan with rental makes sense in today's market for a few reasons:

  1. No presales needed. Condo projects need presales to get financing. Rental projects rely on equity and construction debt, including government programs, so they can start without waiting for buyers.
  2. Population before retail. A first rental building brings residents who support the retail and services planned for later blocks.
  3. Long-term ownership. For a developer with an asset management business, rental creates income that can help fund later phases.

Rose says it is looking for both high-rise and low-rise rental development opportunities and is hiring.[1]

The Scarborough comparison

The same interview offers a contrast. Rose topped off a 27-storey rental at 26 Gilder Drive in Scarborough in late May. It will have 80 affordable and 261 market units, about 800 metres from Kennedy station. It was the first of 44 projects now under construction to break ground under the City of Toronto's Rental Housing Supply Program, in March 2025, and has CMHC Apartment Construction Loan Program financing. Occupancy is expected in late 2027.[1]

Gilder Drive is a single tower on a transit node, financed through a city and federal program. Oakville is a multi-decade, multi-block plan where infrastructure drives timing. Both start with rental, but the risks are different: one is about delivering one building on time and budget, the other about sequencing many buildings around services that don't exist yet.

What to watch

  • Servicing agreements with Halton Region. These will set the pace of the whole project.
  • Floodplain approvals from Conservation Halton. These affect how much of the site can be developed and in what order.
  • First-phase financing. Whether the first rental building uses government construction financing, as Gilder Drive does, will show how much the 905 relies on the same tools as Toronto.

Berholz said there is a lot of land on the market but that unlocking its value is hard.[1] Large suburban brownfield sites are a big part of the GTA's future housing supply. How quickly sites like this one move from approval to occupancy will matter as much as how many units they're approved for.

Sources

[1] The Rose Corporation builds out plan for 14-building Oakville community, RENX (Aug. 27, 2026): https://renx.ca/more-details-revealed-for-oakville-master-planned-community