For Cordova Bay Plaza Development

by Roger Stonebanks, Re-printed by permission from the Cordova Bay Association for Community Affairs Newsletter.

When the time comes for new plans for redevelopment of Cordova Bay Plaza – a local community activist group hopes that affordable housing is part of the plaza’s future.

Spokeswoman Hanny Pannekoek said her group, working under the Saanich South NDP Executive and in support of MLA Lana Popham, has chosen to focus on affordable housing and building community as its current topic.

“We decided to connect the promotion of affordable housing with a future plan for the Cordova Bay Plaza,” she said.

“We envision a plaza which includes affordable housing, a plaza with a mixture of shops, homes and green space, making the plaza a place where people can live, shop and gather in community.” Pannekoek said the group wishes to work with others in a non-partisan way.

Plans for a mixed commercial-residential redevelopment of the plaza, which was built in 1960, were approved by Saanich council in 1999. They included a supermarket three times the size of the present one plus shops with 16 apartments above them and a specific bank building.

But underground gasoline pollution spreading from an off-site closed service station resulted in Saanich not issuing the Development Permit. Remediation was undertaken and a Certificate of Compliance issued in 2012 by the
Environment Ministry. Redevelopment, however, did not occur. Most leases including Tru-Value Foods run to 2017.

Plaza spokeswoman Brenda Ferguson of Sutton Realty told The Cordovan a review of the future of the property including whether to sell or redevelop will happen by the spring of 2016. “Nothing is planned at this time,” she said. If the decision is to sell, the buyer would need at least a year’s lead time or longer.

She said it has proven difficult to lease vacant space (there are two vacancies) with only the offer of a short-term lease. Five-year leases now would take the plaza to 2020. Recently, the plaza faced the expense of a new roof that “had to be replaced.”  

Pannekoek, a former secretary of the Cordova Bay Association for Community Affairs (CBA), said the CBA has offered to work with her group in holding an ‘open house’ to discuss the idea of affordable housing with the wider community and solicit further ideas and input.

Anyone interested in this matter and/or would like to work with the group is invited to contact Hanny at [email protected]