Mississauga Is Building the Longest Pier on the Great Lakes

For decades, the stretch of Lake Ontario waterfront at the eastern edge of Mississauga was off-limits. It belonged to the Lakeview Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant whose four towering smokestacks loomed over the shoreline and whose industrial pier existed for one purpose only: hauling coal off ships. The public never got near it.

That's about to change in a big way.

From Coal Plant to Waterfront Icon

The 177-acre site once occupied by the power station is now the future home of Lakeview Village, one of the largest waterfront redevelopment projects in the Toronto area. When the coal plant came down, it left behind something unexpected: a long-abandoned industrial pier stretching out into the lake. Rather than demolish it, the developers behind the project — Lakeview Community Partners Limited — decided to reimagine it as the centerpiece of the entire community.

The result, once complete, will be the longest Canadian pier on the Great Lakes.

Just How Long Are We Talking?

When the project was first announced in 2021, the pier was pitched at 600 metres — already enough to dwarf the nearby Brant Street Pier in Burlington, which measures a modest 137 metres. For context, Chicago's famous Navy Pier on Lake Michigan still holds the title for longest pier on the Great Lakes overall, stretching over 1,000 metres, so Mississauga's version was always framed as the longest Canadian entry rather than the outright record-holder.

But the ambitions have grown since then. More recent plans put the pier at closer to one kilometre in length, which would put it in the same league as Navy Pier itself. The design calls for diamond-shaped platforms and a sweeping arc, meant to evoke a "sunrise-to-sunset" experience as visitors move along the water.

More Than Just a Walkway

The pier isn't being built as a simple boardwalk. Plans describe it as a year-round destination in its own right, with room for local food vendors, art installations, music festivals, and even ferry access. Visitors will reportedly be able to look west toward the marinas and parkland along Mississauga's waterfront, or east toward the Toronto skyline — a vantage point the city hasn't really had before.

City officials have backed the vision with real money: Mississauga City Council approved a community benefits agreement in 2024 that includes a $28-million contribution specifically earmarked for rebuilding the pier.

The Bigger Picture: A New Neighbourhood

The pier is really just one piece of a much larger transformation. Lakeview Village as a whole is planned to include:

• Roughly 8,000 new homes, with capacity for around 20,000 residents

• An Innovation District spanning close to 2 million square feet, targeting about 9,000 long-term jobs in research and technology

• 200,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space

• Dozens of acres of parkland, including an extension of the Trans Canada Trail and a protected conservation area

• A district energy system intended to eventually run on treated wastewater rather than natural gas

The first residents aren't expected to move in until early 2029, and the full build-out is projected to take 15 to 20 years. But the coal plant is gone, the land has been remediated, and the pier — once a symbol of industrial exclusion from the waterfront — is being rebuilt as the thing that reconnects the city to it.

Mississauga's skyline is already changing fast. Give it a decade, and its waterfront might be unrecognizable too.