The ceremonial shovels used for the groundbreaking at Omicron’s Eagle Creek project in View Royal may have been used to toss around relief as much as dirt on Thursday as work got underway in earnest at the site.
Earth movers and excavators have been clearing land at the 10-acre site for about a week and Omicron chief executive Bill Tucker can’t hide his enthusiasm at watching them make way for the $100 million mixed-use development.
“It takes a long time to put together a project of this size ... you can’t imagine how great it is to be started,” said Tucker in an interview. “It’s a sophisticated process to develop land and build projects like this, and when you see machines moving and dirt being hauled and excavation and seeing concrete poured there’s nothing better, other than finally handing over the keys to tenants.”
Tucker has been waiting more than six years to see action on the site at the corner of Helmcken Road and Watkiss Way across from Victoria General Hospital. It was sidelined, like many projects, due to the global recession in 2008.
The project, to be built in two phases over the next four years, includes eight buildings, 112,000 square feet of commercial retail space, 76,000 square feet of professional office space and 60 rental housing units. The second phase is the development of 100 condominiums.
The commercial retail space is already 85 per cent leased with Quality Foods as the main anchor. Other tenants include Cascadia Liquor, Tim Hortons, Cobs, Starbucks, Pizza Al Forno, Subway, Great Clips and Forbes Pharmacy.
Tucker said they will continue to fill in space over the next year and a half, keeping an eye out for the right tenants. “We will be looking for the right mix of uses to put together the centre to service the community,” he said. “We won’t do every deal that comes along.”
The groundbreaking was used to announce a new YM-YWCA will be included in the tenant mix, taking up about 10,000 square feet.
“We’ve been looking at expanding our services particularly as we service so many young families,” said Jennie Edgecombe, chief executive of the Greater Victoria YM-YWCA.
Unlike the full-service YM-YWCA being planned for Langford and expected to be up and running in 2016, the View Royal site will be a satellite that focuses on childcare — there will be 36 day care spots — family and teen programming and limited adult programs with a small health and fitness centre.
“When we saw the opportunity here, we knew there was a need for childcare here, and then we looked at the opportunity and we thought we could do more services as the space lent itself to doing more,” she said.
Edgecombe stressed the YM-YWCA is not leaving downtown Victoria. The organization is looking at its aging Broughton Street facility to determine if it’s wiser to replace or refurbish it and what programs and services are required downtown.
Omicron is estimating tenants could be in their space at Eagle Creek to do tenant improvements by the end of 2014 with doors opening in 2015.
Tucker said Eagle Creek has been designed with the community in mind.
“One of the things we’ve done is been extremely careful about how we brought this project to market. You can make a mistake to bring a project that is too large to a community,” he said. “This project is scaled very nicely for the community both in massing and in the number of uses we have on site.”
By contrast the mixed-use project at Colwood Corners, the League group of companies’ Capital City Centre, has been idle since July and the company behind it is going through a court-approved restructuring process.
