A Langford thrift store that closed after the apartment building next door was evacuated last month for the second time due to safety concerns has reopened in a space in Langford City Hall.
Saint Vincent de Paul closed on April 26, two days after the city revoked the occupancy permit for RidgeView Place and the property owner ended tenancies with residents, urging them to move out immediately.
“It was tough. Nobody really knew, right? Livelihoods were hanging in the balance. Nobody really knew what was going to happen,” said Derek Pace, executive director of Saint Vincent de Paul. “So this is for us a real positive story, a real positive outcome.”
The thrift store reopened in unit 101 of city hall Monday after remaining closed for just over two weeks.
Pace said the charity reached out to the city to ask for support and was offered a space in the city building.
“It was a real quick turnaround, a whirlwind move,” Pace said.
The space is smaller than the Claude Road storefront, but staff have managed to move many products into the new location, he said.
It’s unclear how long the store will operate in the city hall space, but Pace called it a temporary move.
“It’s an opportunity for the staff to be doing what they love. We have a team that loves to support the community,” he said.
Saint Vincent de Paul is a registered charity that provides social services, such as a food pantry, housing for moms and kids, $10-a-day daycare and day programming for adults with diverse needs. Funds from the thrift store support these services.
Donations are being accepted at 1010 Craigflower Rd.
A parish office and daycare run by Our Lady of the Rosary Parish on the other side of RidgeView Place also closed shortly after the apartment building was evacuated. The parish could not be reached Tuesday, but in a post on its website the parish deacon said an alternate location has been found for the daycare until the end of June, when it was scheduled to close.
RidgeView Place, formerly called Danbrook One, ran into problems shortly before Christmas in 2019, after the Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. informed the city of an investigation into the engineer of record on the building. The engineer, Brian McClure, and a second engineer, Ted Sorensen, at the same firm have since had their registrations cancelled by the provincial regulatory body.
Langford issued a second occupancy permit in April 2022 after remediation work was completed.
Last month, the provincial regulatory body informed the city and property owner Centurion Property Associates Inc. of an investigation into the engineer responsible for the remediation work. The investigation is ongoing.
In a letter, the regulatory body provided details of a variety of potential structural design issues that may not have been addressed by the original remediation and concluded that it had received no evidence that a comprehensive review of the building’s structural design or the built structure was ever conducted for the remediation work.
Centurion hired an independent engineer who deemed the building unsafe, and recommended evacuation.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
