McMorran’s Beach House is for sale and will close in April, putting prime waterfront property on the market.

The municipality of Saanich already has a conditionally accepted offer on part of the Cordova Bay Road property which they will use as a park, but the remaining three lots — two waterfront — are for sale.

The McMorran family property is an institution in Greater Victoria, the site of thousands of weddings, celebrations and meals since it opened in 1921. It has been family-owned and operated by the McMorrans for the past 88 years.

But Wallace McMorran, the general manager of McMorran’s and the grandson of founders George and Ida McMorran, said it is too difficult to make the business profitable. The family put in “millions” in the 1990s, he said, improving the building and seismographically upgrading it. That increased business but not enough.

“The return on the investment has been meager,” McMorran said. “There was tremendous effort and support from the community, but to be blunt, the restaurant industry is very low in profitability, particularly given the expenses we put in.”

Saanich has a conditional offer to buy the grassy lot at 5099 Cordova Bay Rd., essentially all the land south of the existing legal beach access. The municipality paid $869,000 for the 566-square-metre lot that looks over Haro Strait and will rezone it as parkland.

The offer came to the municipality on Thursday. They dealt with it in-camera on Monday night and voted unanimously in favour of buying the lot.

“This is a decision council can feel proud of turning around so quickly. This type of opportunity — a vacant, accessible, open waterfront lot — doesn’t come up very often and it would have easily been snapped up by someone wanting to build a huge house, or subdivide to two lots,” Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard said.

The municipality has until Dec. 15 to take off its conditions, which are another appraisal and checking for environmental contamination. Lots with tear-down houses along the waterfront side of Cordova Bay Road can sell for over $1 million.

The final operating day for McMorran’s Beach House will be Easter Sunday, which falls on April 4.

Charter’s Restaurant will close for the month of December to provide service for the busy holiday season in the Lookout Room banquet room. The restaurant will re-open in January and will close permanently along with the Lookout Room in April.

McMorran had hoped Saanich would buy the entire property and use the renovated banquet area as a community centre. But Leonard said there is “no rationale for the municipality to own a restaurant or whatever the building would be used for.”

The three properties will be publicly listed “in the low $3-millions,” McMorran said.

McMorran would like to sell the waterfront lots together, preferably as a package for redevelopment. He hopes that will be a “contributing factor to the village core in the community.”

It could be one of the biggest redevelopments the Cordova Bay area has seen.

The land is zoned residential and commercial. Any redevelopment would be carefully watched by the Cordova Bay Community Association and council.

“Anyone wanting to change the land use or wanting more mass there would require rezoning. It’s an incredibly sensitive site that the community feels quite passionate about,” Leonard said.

Roger Stonebanks of the Cordova Bay Residents Association said the closure comes as a surprise to many “and with more than a little sadness. Its history goes back to the 1920s when the McMorran family started their beachfront Tea Rooms. In the years since then it has been a prominent feature of community life in Cordova Bay — the scene of many wedding receptions, ballroom dances and community meetings — as well as a restaurant and patio.”

Area residents will keep a close eye on redevelopment plans.

“Residents will look forward to a thorough community consultation and input process including public meetings for whatever will be proposed in its place. Whatever is proposed will be examined closely by residents and it will need to 'fit into' the neighbourhood,” Stonebanks said.

kwestad@tc.canwest.com