Bill Bowman
The busy intersection of Powell and Columbus Drives in Carbonear is about to get a lot busier when a "new retail store" opens its doors.
The new retail outlet will be going up on the southeast corner of the intersection in an area where a ramp once took traffic from Columbus onto Powell Drive before the intersection was realigned.
Plazacorp Retail Properties, a Fredericton, New Brunswick-based company, is developing the property for a client, which company officials declined to identify when contacted last week.
The proposed development in Carbonear moved a step closer to reality Jan. 9 when the Carbonear town council passed a motion to sell three parcels of land on the site for $249,300 to Plazacorp.
Kim Sharpe, Plazacorp's director of business development, said he was in a position to divulge the name of the client.
As for the proposed development, Sharpe said, "we like Carbonear." Town officials have been "very good to deal with and we're pleased with the way things are going."
Leading property owner
The corporation is one of Eastern Canada's leading property owners, developers and managers of unenclosed and enclosed retail real estate.
Plazacorp holds interest directly, through subsidiaries and through joint venture partners, in some 112 properties, with over 5.1 billion square feet located in 60 communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, according to its website.
The council motion calls for "a development agreement to be signed requiring development of land within a maximum of two years. Otherwise, the land reverts back to the town of Carbonear at 90 per cent of the sale price."
Tight lipped
Except to say that contrary to rumours that had been circulating, the proposed "new retail store is not Shopper's Drug Mart," town administrator Cynthia Davis said she couldn't reveal who it is.
Davis expects an application from Plazacorp to develop the property to be tabled at the Jan. 23 council meeting.
Davis said the company anticipates breaking ground and starting construction on the building sometime this year.
"If this works out for Plazacorp," she said, "who knows? It could see the developer becoming involved in other future developments in the town. We'll keep our fingers crossed."
Rezoned to Commercial General
Meanwhile, Davis also confirmed council has rezoned the area from commercial highway to commercial general. The move effectively opens up the land to a wider variety of commercial development than service stations and fast food outlets.
The property includes part of the old White's Road reservation at the west end of the road.
The intersection was realigned after the town's first set of traffic lights were installed to help control traffic flow to Fox Farm Road, where the Canadian Tire retail store opened at the corner of Columbus Drive and Fox Farm Road in 2001.
Canadian Tire, the first commercial development in the area, now shares the intersection with Scotiabank and Tim Hortons, making it one of the busiest in Conception Bay North.
When the new store opens its doors for business, only the northwest corner of the intersection will remain vacant and undeveloped.
bbowman@cbncompass.ca
Photo by Bill Bowman/The Compass
Plazacorp Retail Properties, one of Eastern Canada's leading property owners/developers, has purchased this land at the corner of Columbus Drive and Powell Drive in Carbonear, where it plans to develop new retail space.
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