By Glen Korstrom
Vancouver’s Lalji family plans to add 10% more space to its 1.2-million-square-foot Park Royal Shopping Centre and spend several million dollars to build a new signalized intersection on Marine Drive west of Taylor Way.
The family’s Larco Investments Ltd. will also propose constructing two 20-storey residential towers with a total of 300 units on land that’s now occupied by a White Spot restaurant.
Residential construction would subsidize development of a multi-screen cinema at Park Royal South.
Larco is set to break ground this fall on a 120,000-square-foot expansion to its successful Village at Park Royal on the south side of West Vancouver’s Marine Drive.
The company demolished some cinemas and a bowling alley in 2003 to create the street-style mall that’s home to tenants such as Whole Foods Market and Home Depot. Sales are in the $650-per-square-foot range, which is high for open-air malls.
Park Royal vice-president Rick Amantea expects between 15 and 18 new tenants to take space in the expansion, which will cost tens of millions of dollars and could open as soon as late 2012.
“They will be Tier 1 specialty retailers who will likely only have one store on the North Shore and maybe only a couple of stores in the entire Metro Vancouver market,” he said.
The 61-year-old shopping mall has grown significantly through the years but still only has one signalized intersection, which is shared with traffic coming off the Lions Gate Bridge and heading up Taylor Way to the Upper Levels Highway.
Larco is therefore financing the reconstruction of what is now a vehicle overpass between north and south Park Royal. The company will rebuild that transit-point by creating an at-grade intersection that will also make the mall more accessible for pedestrians, cyclists and people who have mobility challenges.
Larco is one of B.C.’s larger land owners. It spent $1.64 billion in 2007 to buy nine federal government buildings, including Sinclair Centre and 401 Burrard Street.
The company’s other assets include:
- malls such as Arbutus Village, The Shops at Morgan Crossing and Whistler Village Centre;
- Bridge Studios; and
- hotels such as the Vancouver Airport Mariott through its Larco Hospitality subsidiary.