The former Cornell Chevrolet dealership on Douglas Street is being razed to make way for a new home for Metro Lexus Toyota.
"We are hoping to be completed by the end of 2013," Bill Harbottle, president of Jim Pattison Automotive Group, said from Vancouver on Friday. "We are very anxious to get moving on this. It has been something we have been working on for a long period of time."
The move to 3050 Douglas Street will give Metro Lexus Toyota, located across the street, considerably more room. Buildings on the new property will total 60,000 square feet, up from a total of 40,000 square feet at its existing Frances Avenue main site and at offsite locations, Harbottle said.
Designs are still being finalized, but initial plans call for a two-level Lexus dealership close to the corner of Burnside Road and Finlayson Street, he said.
A separate four-level Toyota dealership closer to Douglas Street and the south property line is also planned. The showroom would be on the main lower level. A mezzanine would hold customer service and administration departments. The third floor will be parts and service and the fourth will hold an automatic car wash and parking.
Designs must be approved by Lexus and Toyota and a building permit is required from the City of Victoria. Environmental abatement has been completed to remove hazardous materials such as old asbestos-covered pipes and vinyl tiles.
"There will be nothing like it in Victoria," Harbot-tle predicted of the finished product. Construction costs are not being revealed.
The Pattison Group came to an agreement last year to buy the land from Cornell Babie, where he had a dealership for 36 years. It was leased to Dave Wheaton GMC in 2006 and closed three years later.
A phased redevelopment of the Toyota's site, which runs through to Finlayson, was considered, but it made more sense to build a new facility across the street because of the impact to existing operations while going through construction, Harbottle said.
"We've been looking for years at various options to expand and redevelop the existing site. We need more service bay capacity to look after our customers. We need more parking. We've got a very small showroom and we weren't properly representing the brand image for Toyota."
At first, the idea was to renovate the existing building and adding on to it, but the cost of seismic improvements required was prohibitive, Harbottle said.
No decision has been made on what will happen on the Frances Avenue property, he said.
"We may redevelop it ourselves, or we may sell it," he said. "We'll decide on that as we get closer to vacating and moving across the street."
A total of 121 staff work at the dealership.
As of late October, Toyota was the global leader in auto sales, reaching 7.4 million vehicles for the year.
