Increasing demand from intergenerational and growing families has sparked Minto Communities to introduce its first five- and six-bedroom flexible housing plans at its Park & Main townhome development in Markham, Ont.

Currently in its early stages, Park & Main is planned to have a total of 119 townhomes — 81 traditional street townhomes and 38 back-to-back townhomes.

Flexible townhome plans will be offered at Park & Main, giving customers the possibility to acquire units that can be as large as five to six bedrooms.

Due to rising housing costs in the Greater Toronto Area, more families are opting to live under the same roof in an intergenerational style, Vince Santino, Minto’s vice-president of development, said in an interview with RENX Homes. Minto is addressing this shift with these new designs.

“Being able to provide housing at Park & Main and developing it with a focus on flexibility, meeting the changing needs of homeowners and ensuring that we’ve got intergenerational living options, I think the additional bedrooms certainly facilitate that.”

Meeting ‘thoughtful growth’

The three- to four-bedroom traditional townhomes are planned to range from over 1,920 square feet to over 2,500 square feet, with the option to create five- or six-bedroom units. The flexible plans offer buyers the choice of adding up to two more bedrooms in the basement.

The back-to-back units will be smaller than the site's other townhomes at 1,430 square feet to just under 1,800 square feet. Three-bedroom configurations will be offered for all the back-to-back units, including interior units.

Starting prices for back-to-back units will be $1.1 million, Santino said, while traditional townhomes will start at $1.5 million.

Servicing construction is currently underway, with the project expected to begin in summer 2024 and closings to start in the spring to summer of 2025. Sales will start as the prep work completes, then construction will begin on the homes.

Befitting its design, most of the interest in Park & Main has come from families looking to live in a multigenerational home or people looking to start a family, Santino said.

For sustainability, Minto is designing the homes at Park & Main to target ENERGY STAR certifications. Water-efficient fixtures, a high performance envelope, heat recovery ventilators and individual metering are planned to be integrated to minimize resource waste and cut carbon emissions.

Nestled in a mature neighbourhood

Located close to Markham’s Unionville neighbourhood, Park & Main is surrounded by a “mature” area with basic amenities already in place in nearby in Unionville, according to Santino. “You don’t really get that in a lot of newer, larger developments or communities.”

The community offers access to parks such as Bruce's Creek, walking trails and retail options including boutique clothing stores.

Three of Ontario's 400 series highways are within a 20-minute drive, and commuters will be nearby three GO Stations and transit hubs. Both the highways and commuter trains offer access to the wider Greater Toronto Area, as well as the downtown core.

The challenge of Park & Main is “much like bringing the community to a lot of areas that are in and around the city where we’re at already,” Santino said. “Certainly, for us, we had to be very mindful of the existing community and the residents.”

Minto hopes to achieve this by designing Park & Main’s homes with a Victorian and Gothic theme along Main St. to match the pre-existing community.

“That made us think about a lot of things, certainly in terms of the design of the homes, we wanted to make sure that we’re adding to that community’s aesthetic overall.”

Park & Main complements Minto’s Union Village project in Markham which is scheduled to release its next batch of sales in 2025, according to Santino.

He also noted two other developments, Westshore at Long Branch in Etobicoke and Heights of Harmony in Oshawa, are in the sales phase.

Other future Greater Toronto Area developments are:

• Brooklin in Whitby and Courtice in Durham as townhome and detached home communities; and
• condo developments Danforth Village and Queen West in Toronto, as well as Mimico in Etobicoke.