City hopes by-law changes will calm Ridgeway Plaza. Number of restaurants to be slowly phased out.
Mississauga’s Ridgeway Plaza is causing debate once again. City council recently passed a by-law that will gradually reduce the number of restaurants in the plaza “over time.”
Mississauga’s Ridgeway Plaza is causing debate once again. City council recently passed a by-law that will gradually reduce the number of restaurants in the plaza “over time.” City staff believe this will help with “mitigating parking and circulation pressures.”
There have been 100 complaints about the plaza since 2022. While the city acknowledges that something has to be done to manage the crowding and sometimes noisy and rowdy behaviour that the plaza has become known for, its options are limited.
Ridgeway Plaza is a condominium corporation. Each storefront is owned independently and overseen by the condo board. Most storefronts are then rented out to tenants.
In a report to city council, Mississauga planning staff were clear, “The city’s role is limited to regulating land uses through zoning and coordinating improvements on public roads where municipal jurisdiction applies.”
The zoning changes the city passed in early January were based on the results of a parking study the city commissioned in 2024 and 2025. The study looked at the parking situation in the plaza over two 2-day visits; one on a Thursday and Saturday evening in late November 2024 and then again on a Thursday and Saturday the following spring in May 2025.
According to the November portion of the study, despite the cold and dark conditions, “crowding of pedestrians and vehicles was observed on both days, especially outside of some of the restaurants.”
The study also found that on Saturday May 3, 2025 – when the weather was mild and daylight hours longer – the parking congestion was even greater. At 10pm in one area of the plaza, out of 901 parking spaces, 883 were full and in the other area, 747 out of 749 spaces were full.
During public meetings on the plaza, Mississauga residents and Ridgeway business owners provided suggestions as to how traffic could be better managed at the plaza. Some of these suggestions included improved pedestrian infrastructure, additional traffic calming measures, building a dedicated parking structure and creating a paid parking system with business validation to discourage non-patron gatherings and car meets.
In response to these suggestions, Mississauga staff once again reiterated that “the City does not own land within the study area… parking management initiatives would need to be initiated and implemented by the private landowners or condominium corporations, and not the City.”
Last summer, the City of Mississauga had to go to court to get an injunction to block Ridgeway Plaza from hosting “nuisance gatherings” on Pakistan Independence Day and on Afghanistan Independence Day.
According to court documents, prior to the injunction, the “City made repeated requests to the board of directors for the respondent Corporations to address the public safety and other concerns with large-scale gatherings at Ridgeway Plaza.” While the condo board did install stop signs and speed bumps and hire some additional security, the court found “the Corporation’s relatively modest efforts did little to manage or control the gatherings.”
From the city’s perspective, “on-site activity and behaviour within the plazas remain the responsibility of the private owners and condominium corporations.”
When the Ridgeway Plaza site plan was originally approved in 2021, city planners thought it would be like regular Mississauga plazas, which contain a mix of retail, office and manufacturing uses. They did not anticipate the “concentration of restaurants and the associated parking and pedestrian traffic.”
The city hopes the by-law change “represent[s] a balanced, mindful approach” which will help “over time… gradually rebalance activity levels… improving compatibility with the surrounding neighbourhood without undermining the plaza’s economic vitality.”
In the meantime, it will be business as usual at Ridgeway Plaza.
