Chard Development Ltd. is aiming to purchase the former White Spot restaurant property at Douglas Street and Caledonia Avenue to redevelop it into a mixed-use project featuring housing and a plaza.
Byron Chard, company chief executive and president, said Wednesday that their offer has been accepted for the property. The sale has not closed and he did not reveal when that could happen.
The selling price is confidential.
“We see it as an opportunity to continue our investments in downtown Victoria,” Chard said.
“It would be our intent to redevelop it and create a diversity of housing and employment opportunities.”
The official community plan includes a target for a “quite a large plaza for the site, which we are looking to incorporate into our design,” Chard said.
He envisions a mixture of employment from retail to offices and other opportunities, but is not being more specific.
Chard Development is in discussions with several groups around what is needed in that part of town, he said.
The pending sale comes as the White Spot at 710 Caledonia Ave. closed permanently after about 50 years in that location.
White Spot said that location was one of the hardest hit by pandemic restrictions.
Government documents show that the property is owned by Shato Holdings of Vancouver, founded by the late Peter Toigo, who bought the White Spot group of restaurants. The company is involved in office, commercial and residential developments.
The Caledonia Avenue property is adjacent to Capital City Centre Hotel, recently purchased by the province for almost $25 million to provide 94 temporary supportive housing units. B.C. had already been leasing rooms there for close to a year.
Chard has been one of the city’s most active developers, putting up condominiums as well as two recent projects with social housing components.
The 20-storey Vivid at 845 Johnson St. was developed in partnership with B.C. Housing, which provided a low-interest construction financing loan to the developer. That allowed the one‑ and two-bedroom units to sell for an average of 12 per cent below market rate.
The company is launching sales for the six-storey Haven, at the southwest corner of Fernwood along Johnson Street, also directed at middle-income buyers.
Haven’s units will be sold at fair market value, with the B.C. Housing’s affordable homeownership program providing buyers with a 10 per cent, interest-free, payment-free “mortgage” toward the purchase. The program essentially credits the purchaser with 10 per cent of their home’s value, Chard said.
The company keeps affordability in mind in its projects. “That is part of our vision for the site.”
