A rendering of one of the new Amazon warehouses being built on Evans Avenue.
One of the largest packaging company in Canada which has been a fixture on Evans Avenue for almost 80-years is being demolished to construct a new Amazon warehouse, residents say.
Cascades Inc., a leader in the recovery and manufacturing of green packaging and tissue products, has been located at 450 Evans Avenue since 1955.
The company operated in 90 locations and had 12,000 employees when the branch was closed for strategic repositioning of its business in Ontario and globally.
Cascades closed its South Etobicoke branch in August 2021 and sold the almost 17-acre property for reportedly more than $40 million to Prologis Inc., of the U.S.
This is the proposed look of the two warehouses when completed.
It was the fourth Cascades plant to be closed in Ontario in the last four years. The company was one of the largest packaging company in Canada, which also shut plants in Barrie, Peterborough and Burlington.
The sprawling plant is being demolished to build two large warehouses on the site for Prologis, Inc., a global leader in logistics real estate with a focus on high-barrier, high-growth markets. Its customers include BMW, DHL and Federal Express, to name a few.
The company said on its website it has more than one million employees in 19 locations, more than 6,700 customers and moves more than $2 trillion in goods yearly.
Site of Cascades Inc. before it was sold to Prologis Inc. for warehouses.
Prologis has another plant at 185 The West Mall, and others across Canada and the U.S.
A boom in online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic is making it tough to find warehouse space in many provinces, industry insiders say.
Industrial space is being gobbled up at a dizzying rate as companies expand their storage and fulfilment centres to cope with the demands of e-commerce.
With storefronts closed intermittently during the pandemic, retailers rushed to offer online shopping to keep sales going. Those companies needed additional space to store inventory and process orders for delivery.
Statistics Canada said retail e-commerce sales were up 110.7 per cent year over year to $3.5 billion in January.
Demolition is underway for new warehouses on Evans Avenue.
Officials said Canada’s industrial markets are the tightest in North America and the country can’t build space fast enough to satisfy the “voracious” demand.
Toronto, Vancouver and Ontario’s Waterloo region had the lowest availability rates for warehouses. Halifax, Calgary and Edmonton had the highest.
Social media has been busy with chatter in regards to the Prologis warehouse being built.
No Shipping Terminals, a local group against the large warehouses, has a map of existing and planned warehouses that show 450 Evans as being a location.
Some Cascades Inc. employees when the plant was up and running.
“It is one of the warehouses for Amazon that is being built in the community,” a spokesperson said.
Another resident had no doubts that an Amazon warehouse will soon be up and running.
“The 450 Evans location is going to be an Amazon distribution center,” the man said. “Having spoken to the workers on the site they’ve all said Amazon are going there.”
Another person wrote that the larger lot that was Cascades is going to be a shipping terminal, much to the chagrin of most people who live in the Alderwood.
“It means lots more trucks running up and down the already over congested Evans,” another resident wrote. “At least the trucks will force some of the morons who do 100km/h up Evans to slow down.”