The first three of more than 100 pilings were driven into place in front of the Songhees Friday as construction finally started on the Victoria International Marina.
“It’s a very big day for us. We’ve been almost 10 years in the process and finally we have an opportunity to get started,” said Larry Halgren, spokesman for WAM Development Group, which is behind the project in partnership with Victoria developer Bob Evans.
The project, first pitched to the city in May 2008, has faced citizen protests, city hall debates, environmental studies and a raft of permit applications.
Opponents said the marina, and the large yachts it wanted to attract, would block views, cause Inner Harbour congestion, harm the environment and make the area less attractive.
WAM made changes, including reducing the size of the project, and eventually won government approvals to go ahead.
Once completed, the 29-slip marina will offer moorage for boats between 65 and 150 feet long and feature two one-storey commercial buildings of about 7,000 square feet each. The buildings will be supported by pilings in the water.
Building permits for the buildings, valued at $6.5 million, were recently issued by the City of Victoria.
Friday’s action in front of the Songhees was a one-day affair; the worksite will go silent until WAM obtains more building materials.
“We will be back as quickly as we can,” said Halgren, noting they are waiting on more steel piles from Vancouver. “They are hard to get your hands on.”
Halgren said they couldn’t order them too far in advance as they weren’t sure when they were going to be issued a building permit or whether there might be further delays.
“Today we’ve placed three pilings in position to be used as control points for the installation of other foundation piles,” he said. They hope to resume driving piles before all work on the site must cease temporarily to comply with an order from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to protect fish stocks.
“If we can get back with those materials before the Fisheries closure we will do that; otherwise we will have to wait until the next opening,” he said. The site is to be shut down for a period in October.
“The process of getting the building permit was pretty long, we applied in April and got them a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “We thought we might have them quicker than that.”
Halgren said he expects dredging to take place during the next opening allowed by Fisheries and Oceans later this year.
Though the marina is at least a year and a half away from being open, Halgren said they already have interest from commercial tenants, though no leases have been signed, and they have reserved some slips for boat owners.
WAM’s website said seven slips have been spoken for.
At one point WAM thought it might be able to have boats moored at the site as early as the spring of 2014.
“Interest has been pretty healthy,” said Halgren, noting that bodes well for Victoria’s economy. For every day a boat is moored here, Victoria sees spending of between $1,000 and $10,000. “They go to restaurants, they buy services like dry cleaning, they buy fresh food, they go to Butchart Gardens — they do all the things that generate revenue for the community.”
Friday’s construction didn’t seem to cause much of a stir, despite the earlier acrimony. People using Songhees pathways did little more than stop briefly to watch the barge crew install the pilings.
