An artist's rendering of 550 Pandora Avenue, a mixed-use residential and retail complex slated to replace a single-storey commercial building currently home to Mo:Lé Restaurant, Habit Coffee, Café Bliss and other retailers. Alan Lowe Architect
A commercial building home to several popular downtown Victoria businesses is slated for redevelopment, Citified has learned.
550-558 Pandora Avenue, home to Mo:Lé Restaurant, the original location of Habit Coffee, Café Bliss, Cavity Curiosity Shop and The Vorpal Gnome, will be making way for construction of a purpose-built rental complex with modernized retail spaces, if development plans are approved by the City.
Rising to five-storeys, the new building will bring just under 40 residences to Chinatown while its ground floor level will yield two commercial spaces with frontage onto Pandora Avenue.
Plans to redevelop the single-storey building were first aired in the spring of this year.
Coffee connoisseurs and fans of brunch need not immediately worry, however, as tenant leases remain in place and it could be several years before relocation efforts are underway. Pending municipal approvals by mid-2019, demolition of the existing structure would not be expected to occur until 2020 at the earliest.
The 500-block of Pandora Avenue has seen major changes in recent years with the construction of a bi-directional Pandora Avenue bicycle lane connecting Cooke Street with the newly-opened Johnson Street Bridge, the re-purposing of 595 Pandora Avenue (an office building-turned condominium residence), construction of the Union condominiums adjacent to Swans Hotel, the heritage restoration of several historic buildings (like the Lee Cheong and Lum Sum brownstones) between Store and Government streets and the heritage restoration of the Janion Hotel into a micro-loft project. C
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