Vancouver Mall is embarking on a plan to build a satellite building and hopes to bring in three restaurants to fill the space in 2020. The mall submitted a preliminary application for the project to the city of Vancouver earlier this month.
Tenants are not yet signed, said mall general manager JB Schutte, but the mall is negotiating with potential occupants. The proposed structure would include a 5,066-square-foot space intended for a fast-food restaurant with a drive-thru and 3,931 square feet of remaining space that would be split between two high-turnover, sit-down restaurants.
Schutte said the mall’s management staff have been contemplating the expansion for the past four years, with an eye toward expanding the mall’s role as a restaurant and entertainment venue in addition to a retail destination.
“We’ve got a substantial amount of extra parking, and there seems to be a demand for more restaurants,” he said.
The new building would sit on a 1.9-acre portion of the mall’s main parking lot, near the southwest corner entrance from Northeast Thurston Way. The project would result in a net loss of 82 mall parking spaces, but the application states that the mall will still have a net excess of spaces.
No exact timeline
The exact timeline of the project is still up in the air — Schutte said it depends in part on the city approval process, because the addition will need to be approved before tenants are signed. The soonest tenants would move in would be 2020, he said.
Schutte said the satellite building will be the mall’s first major expansion since the 1980s. The mall has undergone a number of remodeling projects in recent years, but no expansions aside from modifications to individual tenant spaces, such as the addition of Cinetopia in 2012.
“In 2011 we remodeled the property, but we didn’t add any GLA (gross leasable area),” he said.
Schutte said the expansion is made possible by investments from mall owner Centennial Real Estate. Centennial bought the mall in 2015 from previous owner Westfield, but Schutte and the rest of the management team stayed on through the transition.
Schutte characterized the expansion as the latest in a number of recent changes to the mall that were made possible by the increased funding, such as new stairs and improved lighting.
