But with Asian-themed competitors Pacific Mall and Market Village across the street and another condo-mall giant, The Landmark, under construction further east on Steeles, will there be enough shoppers to go around?

"I certainly hope so," Splendid China Group CEO Sheldon Esbin said during a Saturday, Dec. 15 press conference announcing the mall's 600-store Phase 2 is going ahead.

As long as immigrants keep settling in Scarborough and Markham, demand for the condo mall units - individually-owned and ranging down to closet-sized - will stay strong, Esbin said.

"We are creating a hub for immigrants to establish their businesses."

Meanwhile, Esbin said, "the area I call the Golden Triangle" of Pacific Mall, Market Village and now Splendid China, beside the often traffic-clogged Kennedy Road and Steeles intersection, "is becoming the epicentre of the Chinese community."

"There are many people in Scarborough who don't even know this area exists," Esbin said, but it is an engine of prosperity, bound to develop further and draw in merchants and tourists who don't distinguish between its Markham and Scarborough sides.

"It will not end with malls," Esbin predicted in the centre court of Splendid China's Phase 1 building, a converted Canadian Tire that opened earlier this year. "It will continue with hotels, with apartments, with residential."

Phase 2 had gone to the Ontario Municipal Board, held up by traffic concerns not by the city but the Markham-side malls. This month, however, the OMB hearing ended with a settlement on its first day.

Splendid China will pay for the extension of tiny Redlea Avenue south to Passmore Avenue by the time Phase 2 opens in late 2009 and for a traffic light at that intersection.

The mall, with 1,400 parking spots on site, has a deal with GO Transit to use the nearby Milliken station lot during off-peak hours. A four-acre property purchase provides more potential spaces during construction, Splendid China development director Patrick Chan suggested.

The developers say they expect a larger share of mall customers will reach Splendid China by public bus or train. The province is spending $20 million on another set of tracks, so GO trains north and south can be used all day and Milliken station will be expanded and enhanced, Esbin said.

"Traffic will not be worse than it is now."

Splendid China will install speed humps, if needed, in the Heathwood subdivision west of the mall. Its development charges will also pay to expand L'Amoureaux Community Centre, welcome news in what Ward 39 (Scarborough-Agincourt) Councillor Mike Del Grande noted is a "priority neighbourhood" the city calls lacking in community resources.

Del Grande said he envisions building a "community hub" at L'Amoureaux, including social services and a swimming pool.

The mall itself, he said, "is a testament to the Chinese community's vitality and success," and part of what will be a stronger North Scarborough for all.

The area could be a destination point, an Eaton Centre of the North, Del Grande added.

Heathwood residents were insisting all along that Redlea must be extended further south to at least McNicoll Avenue, a position Del Grande backs, along with the extension of Silver Star Boulevard, now blocked at Passmore, to McNicoll.

Homeowners had asked for an advanced green signal at Passmore and Kennedy to discourage frustrated drivers from cutting through local streets. They still believe the signal would be a better use of money than speed humps, Denis Lanoue, president of Heathwood Ratepayers Association, said this week.

Though Pacific Mall is full of condo units, Market Village is not. Originally built as an outdoor mall, it too has an expansion plan, one which would "rebuild the whole shopping centre" but not as a condo mall, said Johnson Yip, its senior project manager.