Concrete is just the beginning of something greater: a bridge that keeps a trade corridor moving, a tower that anchors revitalization, an arena where a city’s identity takes shape. Our business units have supplied the materials behind some of the most significant structures in North America, and we measure that work not just in cubic yards delivered or specifications met, but in what those structures have meant to the communities around them.
These projects span decades, borders, and building types. What connects them is a shared belief that the materials we supply carry a long-term responsibility to the people who live, work, and move through the places we help build.
When Toronto broke ground on Maple Leaf Gardens in 1931, the city was in the depths of the Great Depression. The decision to build was a statement of confidence, and St Marys Cement supplied the cement behind 10,300 cubic metres of concrete, completing the structure in just six months. At the time, it was one of the largest sports arenas in North America, seating nearly 13,000 people and giving the Toronto Maple Leafs a home where they would go on to win 11 Stanley Cup championships.
The Gardens was always more than a hockey rink. It hosted political rallies, concerts, and cultural events that reflected Toronto’s growing identity, welcoming figures from Queen Elizabeth II to Elvis Presley and the Beatles. For generations of Canadians, the building was a fixed point in the city’s story, a shared place that crossed every boundary of age, background, and neighbourhood.
After the Maple Leafs played their final game there in 1999, the building found a second life in retail and recreation. It still stands today, over 90 years after St Marys helped raise it. This kind of endurance is why this work matters to us.
Canada Building Materials, in partnership with Superior Materials, worked to supply over 100,000 m³ of specialized, high-performance concrete across every phase of construction, from deep underwater foundations to the 220-metre Canadian tower. Each stage required purpose-built mix designs engineered for a 125-year service life, with properties including extended workability retention, freeze-thaw durability, self-consolidating performance, and the high-strength output needed for vertical tower placements of this scale. CBM’s Windsor plant proximity made coordinated, high-volume delivery possible without interruption.
The result is a structure that earned top honours in the Structural Engineering category at the 2025 Ontario Concrete Awards and was named Project of the Year by the Ontario Chapter of the American Concrete Institute. Those recognitions matter to us, but the broader impact matters more. The Gordie Howe International Bridge supports roughly one billion dollars in daily two-way trade along the Canada-U.S. corridor, reduces truck congestion and border-delay costs, and opens new pedestrian and cyclist access between Windsor and Detroit. For the Windsor-Essex region and the communities connected on both sides of the river, this is infrastructure that will shape economic growth and daily life for generations.
Some infrastructure cannot afford downtime. The Peace Bridge connects Buffalo and Fort Erie as one of the busiest border crossings in North America, carrying thousands of commuters, trucks, and families every day. When the bridge deck reached the end of its service life, closing it was never a realistic option. The work had to happen around the people who depended on it.
United Materials on the American side and CBM on the Canadian side partnered with American Bridge Company to deliver a High-Performance Grid Deck concrete mix engineered for low-shrinkage crack resistance and long-term freeze-thaw durability. Night deliveries and tightly coordinated cross-border logistics kept the bridge open throughout. The project was completed on schedule, met its performance targets, and earned the Slag Cement Association’s 2019 Project of the Year recognition for the use of slag cement in high-performance concrete.
What this project demonstrated, more than any single technical specification, is what becomes possible when two VCNA business units work as one team across a border. United Materials and CBM did not hand off responsibilities at the midpoint of the bridge. They built a shared solution for a shared piece of infrastructure, and the communities and trade corridors that depend on that crossing have not missed a day as a result.
At 685 feet and 49 stories, Hudson’s Detroit is the most ambitious mixed-use development the city has seen in generations, and it required concrete to match. Superior Materials supplied more than 54,000 cubic yards of high-strength, pumpable mix formulated to reach up to 14,000 psi, engineered specifically for the structural demands of high-rise vertical construction. From the first pour in 2019 through completion, our team worked closely with the construction crew to ensure every placement met spec.
For Detroit, this building is more than square footage. Hudson’s Detroit represents a generational reinvestment in the city’s downtown core, bringing residential, commercial, and retail life back to one of Woodward Avenue’s most storied addresses. Superior Materials has been part of this region for a long time, and watching a skyline like Detroit’s grow back is exactly the kind of work that reminds us why the materials we supply carry real weight, in every sense.
At 78 and 49 stories, respectively, One Chicago Square sits directly across from Holy Name Cathedral and has permanently reshaped that stretch of the Chicago skyline. Prairie Materials supplied an estimated 130,000 cubic yards of high-strength concrete across the project, a volume on par with what our team delivered to the St. Regis Chicago, making this one of the largest concrete structures on the Chicago skyline.
Projects of this scale in dense urban environments require more than material volume. Concrete strong enough to carry a 78-story tower does not behave the same way it would in a parking garage, so mix designs have to be engineered for the specific loads and curing conditions each structure demands. Getting that mix to the upper floors is its own challenge: pumping it dozens of stories into the air takes equipment and pressure calculations most builds never touch. And doing all of it in the middle of downtown Chicago, with two towers rising at once and a neighbourhood that still has to function around the site, takes coordination that goes well beyond scheduling a truck. This combination of engineering, logistics, and site management working together is what Prairie Materials brings to every major Chicago build.
