Evergreen Shopping Centre in Sooke is on the road to expansion.
Partners REIT, which owns the shopping centre, say it is looking to have an approval from its board within the next two weeks, and then will be applying to the District of Sooke for a development permit.
“How long an approval takes just depends on when they submit their request, because it has to go before council,” said Rob Howatt, the district’s director of development services.
He said a development permit could take a couple months to get, as council has to discuss multiple things such as architecture and ambience of the building, landscaping and traffic flow when considering the permit.
The owners are hopeful to have an approval by late spring, should everything run smoothly.
“We are in the preliminary stages right now, but we are going as fast as we can within the time frame we have,” said Paul Harrs, chief operations officer for Partners REIT.
Harrs said once construction begins, the development should take approximately a year to complete.
The multi-million dollar project, located at 6660 Sooke Rd, will be 7,000 square feet in size, and replace the old section of the mall that burned down in June 2013.
The owners are looking to lease the building to three tenants, and one has already committed to a lease. Harrs wouldn’t comment on the leasees.
“I like to think of the Evergreen Shopping Centre as the nucleus for the town’s retail, so we want to find other uses that are not currently available and bring them to the centre,” Harrs said.