June 24, 2025

The ULI Awards for Excellence recognizes truly superior development efforts in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, with winning projects representing the highest standards of achievement in the development industry. 

This year, 94 projects and programs from across the Americas region were submitted to the competition, with ten developments from North America selected as winners by a multidisciplinary jury of ULI members, including experts in development, finance, planning, urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture.

Awarded a ULI Americas Award for Excellence Waterworks revitalizes a historically significant block in downtown Toronto through the integration of diverse programs.

The mixed-use development conserves and expands an industrial site, transforming the former machine hall into a vibrant food hall. Combined with a YMCA and residential units, including affordable housing and a youth shelter, the design aims to break down socio-economic barriers, enhancing the urban experience for the greater community.

When the developers acquired the site in 2015, they shared the city’s vision of creating a “complete community”, re-integrating the buildings back into the urban fabric, enhancing the public realm, going beyond the minimum in applying the city’s urban design guidelines with regards to massing and terracing, and setting a precedent for new developments through design excellence, combining cutting-edge modern architecture with meticulous heritage restoration. 

A U-shaped 10-storey residential component is positioned above the three-storey heritage base, which includes the façade retention of the original Art Deco building and the preservation of the entire block-long former machine hall at the south end of the site, which has been converted into a Food Hall. It reclaims the original St. Andrew’s Market site, transforming it into a contemporary food hub to serve the community, including public gathering spaces and an open-air courtyard at grade level—the intersection of the pedestrian through-block routes that integrate seamlessly with the surrounding neighbourhood and enhance the urban experience.

By bringing new life to an industrial heritage site, Waterworks expresses a holistic approach to retaining the stories of our cities, while setting the stage for new narratives and opportunities for urban transformation, making a significant contribution to the quality of life within the neighbourhood.

“There was an incredible swath of nominees from North America, Central America, and South America this year, which made selecting winners from an outstanding pool of finalists a challenge,” said jury chair Jackie Knight, President, The Ackerberg Group. “The jury was impressed by the diversity of entries, especially the number of developments that focused on creating spaces that build and connect communities in unique ways. It is not an ‘easy’ time to develop, and these award-winning developments found creative ways to build partnerships and execute critical work, enhancing the built environment for us today as well as for generations to come.”

Learn more about ULI Americas Awards for Excellence winners here.