Now, as the City’s council incumbents—those at the forefront of the plaza conversation—seek re-election in October, Ridgeway remains a flashpoint, prompting questions about local political representation, and what happens when a space takes on new, unexpected life as a gathering place for a community.

It’s hard to conceive of an ordinary strip mall capturing people’s imagination enough for these large spontaneous gatherings, or for soccer legends, comedians, and livesteamers to stop by. “Are we calling them to come do that? No. People are coming themselves,” said restaurant owner Ahmed Goreja, a member of the plaza’s newly formed Ridgeway Business Association.

Sometimes it’s families looking for a late-night bite, or something that reminds them of home from the over 100 halal restaurants serving food from almost every corner of the world. Other times, it’s a convoy streaming in after a big soccer match.

The city hadn’t planned for it at this scale. But by now, years after its opening, Goreja argues they should expect it. “People need a space to gather, to celebrate, and that is going to be Ridgeway Plaza.”

Tensions around Ridgeway Plaza have been present since its opening, reaching a peak in 2024. City spokesperson Irene McCutcheon said 153 complaints about noise, parking and debris have been recorded since 2022, compared to, for example, 128 about Celebration Square, an outdoor venue in Mississauga’s city centre. Complaints, she cautioned, aren’t proof of broken bylaws.

As part of her masters research in urban planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, Zoha Ahsan analyzed a year of social media posts about Ridgeway. She found plenty of complaints about parking, traffic, and noise. Mixed among them were calls to deport plaza-goers. Some called Ridgeway “Gaza Plaza” and made allusions to terrorism, after people gathered to protest what the UN has described as Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“When I noticed how many comments [online] were borderline racist or plain racist, that’s what really reinforced that this work needs to be done,” Ahsan said.

All this takes place against the backdrop of growing anti-Muslim and anti-South Asian sentiment in the Peel Region, where police report a doubling of hate crimes against South Asians between 2024 and 2025.

Some Reddit users claim that activity at the plaza has led to a drop in home prices, but between 2022 and 2024, despite complaints about the plaza peaking, property values in the neighbourhood also rose, according to housing data from the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.

Apart from the heated rants about Ridgeway, there are legitimate criticisms of how the plaza functions. Mejgan Shefa, a 25-year-old public policy graduate, lives just a five-minute drive away, and used to love Ridgeway when it opened. But she rarely goes anymore. “If I go on a Monday morning, after the weekend, you see litter everywhere,” she said. Even picking up food can mean battling traffic and reckless driving, which she believes could be solved by stricter bylaw enforcement.

For Shefa, both things are true: Ridgeway is a cultural space worth preserving, and some behaviour there is unacceptable.

The question this election season, then, is how candidates plan to approach Ridgeway Plaza, and who they believe should be accountable for the challenges it does face.

The plaza is located in Mississauga’s Ward 8, and longtime councillor Matt Mahoney—now seeking re-election for his fourth term—takes a firm stance against the dangerous driving and unauthorized gatherings.

Mahoney said he supports the nearly 300 businesses in Ridgeway, but that the concentration of restaurants draws large crowds late into the night, contributing to overcrowding, blocked emergency access, and dangerous driving. He has backed the City’s nuisance gathering bylaw, and the temporary provincial court injunction aimed at controlling overcrowding at the plaza, while working with Peel Police and the plaza’s condo corporations on additional safety measures.

When asked about the concern that the plaza’s tenants ultimately carry the cost of crowd control measures through rising maintenance fees, Mahoney called it “unfortunate”—but says the responsibility falls onto the plaza’s owners. As part of the mitigation measures, in December 2025, Mississauga City Council also introduced a plan to cut restaurant space by 15 percent over time. (The plaza’s condo corporations did not respond to The Local’s request for an interview.)

To Rahul Mehta, who works on educational programming at a Meadowvale settlement agency and is running against Mahoney in Ward 8, blaming the number of restaurants misses a bigger planning failure, something the city is “a hundred per cent responsible for.” Mehta has a background in urban planning; he points out that Ridgeway became a major destination without transit or pedestrian infrastructure to match. The result is thousands arriving the way Mississauga has long expected them to—by car, he says.

Rather than trying to control those crowds primarily through gates and security, Mehta wants the city to better equip Ridgeway to accommodate them. Better transit could reduce the number of people arriving by car, while more trees and dedicated public spaces would give visitors somewhere to gather outside of parking lots and sidewalks, he said. He also wants the city to work more closely with Ridgeway’s business association, by organizing events like community cleanups and barbecues, to bring the businesses and nearby residents together and ease tensions. This gives neighbours an opportunity to experience the plaza as a community space, rather than only encountering its traffic and noise. Talk of simply enforcing bylaws and policing the neighbourhood, Mehta said, is just “wagging our finger at people.”

But Mehta’s bigger question is why people are celebrating in a parking lot at all: “Do we lack spaces for people to celebrate and have fun?”

He points to Celebration Square as proof that Mississauga can create public spaces designed for large gatherings, and suggests the City shouldn’t have stopped at one. With the City currently reviewing a proposal for a hotel near Ridgeway, Mehta says the site could instead become another public gathering space.

To Mehta, the heart of the Ridgeway Plaza discussion is how the city adapts to and embraces something that’s here to stay. But a town hall about Ridgeway Plaza held in March by five-term city councillor Sue McFadden, who represents the neighbouring Ward 10, was overwhelmed by homeowners who seemed to treat plaza-goers as “the other,” Mehta said.

Khaled Sasa, a journalism student and Ward 10 resident, was also at the townhall, and described the room as “hostile.” He says the crowd—consisting mostly of older white residents—were demanding more police at Ridgeway. One resident, he said, suggested having a police station inside the plaza. Sasa says he was heckled when he tried to speak in defence of Ridgeway.

As troubling as the tone of the conversation, for many it was also the time when it was held—during iftar, a small window of time when Muslims break their fast during Ramadan, making it difficult for them to attend.

Muslims make up 17 percent of residents in Mississauga, according to the 2021 census—and Wards 8 and 10 look a lot like the crowds at Ridgeway, with significant Muslim and South Asian populations. This is something McFadden, who’s seeking her sixth term, is aware of. “I’m very fortunate to have a very large Muslim community,” she told me. “They’re my neighbours.” But when asked about the timing of the town hall, she said, “This was not a meeting for just strictly Muslims. This was a meeting for the community…If people were fasting, they didn’t have to attend.”

That time was the only one available to coordinate police, commissioners, and planning staff, she said; and that those who missed it could read her notes online. She added that talks of building a parking garage for Ridgeway are now in the works.