New youth centre has reduced crime, says Mississauga mayor; more similar hubs planned

A popular youth hub that opened just over a year ago in Mississauga’s north end near Toronto Pearson Airport has reduced petty crime in the area and will serve as a model for other similar facilities moving forward in both Mississauga and beyond, the mayor says.

The $12.6-million Malton Youth Hub Jonathan Davis Centre officially opened in December 2023, though people began using the new facility two months earlier. It has been described by City of Mississauga officials and members of the community as an “incredible youth space” and “a hopping place” since opening its doors.

Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish, who won a byelection last June to succeed former mayor Bonnie Crombie, told INsauga.com in a recent sit-down interview the new Malton youth facility has so far been “a fantastic success.”

Parrish was city councillor for the Malton area both during the planning phase for the youth centre and when it first opened its doors to the community in October 2023. It’s a project that quickly found itself near and dear to the councillor-turned-mayor’s heart.

In its first year, through the end of this past October, the hub had seen more than 90,000 visits, the mayor said. She added provincial government officials had just been on a tour of the facility weeks earlier with an eye toward using it as a model they might “reproduce in troubled areas” in other parts of the GTA and Ontario.

Parrish noted the officials from the ministry of children, community and social services visited during the lunch hour when hundreds of youths were having lunch inside the Jonathan Davis Centre.

Mayor Carolyn Parrish said Mississauga could use more youth hubs like the one that opened in Malton in 2023.

“We feed 300 kids a day who have no breakfast, no lunch … it’s a very poor area of the city,” said Parrish, adding the hub has proven to be helpful to people and the community in a number of ways.

“And I’m pretty sure it’s cutting down on all the petty crime … (such as) shoplifting,” she continued, acknowledging her take on that front is more based on a feeling and observation than on hard numbers. “I don’t think the kids were doing that for the hell of it; I think they were doing it because they were hungry.”

Essentially, the mayor concluded, the new hub is a place for youths, both older and younger, to “hang out” and feel at home; to feel safe and to have something to do and somewhere to be.

“They’re hungry and they need friends,” she added.

The long-awaited Malton Youth Hub, which is attached to Lincoln Alexander Secondary School on Morning Star Drive, was converted from what was previously a school swimming pool into a vast, multi-use centre for young people.

Last August, Parrish took to social media to reveal a second such youth hub was in the works for Mississauga, that one to be located in the city’s east end in the area of Dixie Road and Bloor Street.

She wrote in a post at the time “there are serious plans afoot to build a second youth hub like the one in Malton” at Glenforest Secondary School, which is located at Fieldgate Drive and Burnhamthorpe Road East.

And during her interview with INsauga.com, she said a third youth hub is a strong possibility for Clarkson, in Mississauga’s southwest end, “if I win the next election.”

Among other amenities, the Malton Youth Hub offers services, programs and/or social and cultural activities “that reflect the local community needs,” city officials said in an online description.

Also part of the facility:

• community kitchen for teaching, food production, breakfast and lunch programs
• multi-purpose room for meetings, events and classes
• youth drop-in room
• music recording room
• small rooms in support of spirituality, counselling, 1-2 people meetings, hoteling stations
• atrium with a pop-up stage