CRAFT Beer Market is set to reveal plans Saturday for how it will transform the city-owned Salt Building at the Village on False Creek when it opens a brew pub in summer 2013.
A community open house is scheduled to take place between noon and 4 p.m. that will include local celebrities such as Canadian gold medallist Ashleigh McIvor, who will pose for photos and sign autographs.
CRAFT Beer Market is a Calgary-based company that has one restaurant in Calgary and one in Edmonton.
It will compete with the already-open 12,000-square-foot Tap and Barrel pub, which the Daniel Group operates.
The 350-seat CRAFT Beer Market will fill the largest currently empty retail space in the former Olympic Village.
Other signs of the community evolving in recent months include London Drugs opening a 17,000-square-foot store August 31 and Urban Fare opening a 24,000-square-foot supermarket in June.
Other retail includes:
- Granville Entertainment Group's 8,000-square-foot Legacy Liquor store;
- a TD Canada Trust bank;
- a Village Cleaners dry cleaner; and
- a Terra Breads bakery and café.
"Terra Breads opening was a real game changer," Rennie Marketing Systems owner and marketer Bob Rennie recently told Business in Vancouver. "Once I had the litter of paper cups in the plaza, it would show that there were people there. I needed that. Buyers needed to see that."
Rennie last month noted that 562 of the 737 residential strata units have been sold. That leaves 175 units still for sale.
See next week's BIV for how competition is already brewing between the CRAFT Beer Market and the neighbouring Tap and Barrel pub.
