The renovation of Toronto’s Union Station began a decade ago and, while it’s not over yet, there’s plenty to see. The Front Street Promenade – vintage inspired shopfronts housing independent retailers – was quickly embraced.

The latest opening is a food court where national chains sit alongside born-and-bred Torontonian restaurants, such as the family-owned Italian Scaccia. Union Station is only set to get better with the unveiling of its fresh market…

Enter the revamped retail complex (in the works since 2009) at Toronto’s Union Station, the country’s busiest transit hub, and you’ll be struck by the absence of cookie-cutter chains. Instead, the city’s best independent retailers, including Pilot Coffee Roasters and Greenhouse Juice Co, line the Front Street Promenade. Their shopfronts are inspired by the station’s beaux arts Great Hall dating from 1927.

Union Station, in the heart of Toronto’s downtown financial district, is Canada’s busiest transit hub. Some 250,000 commuters pass through the station daily and those numbers are expected to climb to half a million by 2021. While Union Station’s beaux arts-style Great Hall, built in 1927, is a grand and airy space, decades of wear had left their mark on the station’s subterranean retail complex.