Demolition of downtown Sarnia mall to be completed by March
Demolition of the former Bayside Centre mall is expected to be completed by March, says the owners of the site in downtown Sarnia.
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Demolition of the former Bayside Centre mall is expected to be completed by March, says the owners of the site in downtown Sarnia.
Seasons Retirement Communities bought the downtown mall in 2017, and the land under it in 2020, with plans to replace it with new residential development.
Demolition began in the spring.
“The demolition of the mall is well underway, and we expect that to be completed by March of 2022,” Seasons CEO Michael Lavallee said in an email. “Once demolition is completed, we will begin constructing the retirement home, a phase that should last 24 months.”
Once construction is complete, it will include 160 fully independent apartments, 144 retirement home suites, and 17 townhouses as part of the retirement home, Lavallee said.
“We expect that all phases will be completed by 2026,” he said.
At the same time crews have been demolishing the former shopping mall, renovations have been happening inside the former Hudson’s Bay and Eaton’s department store that has been leased for several years by Lambton County as office space.
“We have had a very busy year renovating the Lambton County Shared Services spaces, which is now in its final stage, which we expect will be completed by early 2022,” Lavallee said.
The county’s shared services space holds social services, the local provincial offences court and other services.
A recent report to Lambton County council said the timeline for the renovations has extended by about six weeks due to “unforeseen abatement issues and material delivery issues.”
It is expected to be completed by the end of March, the report stated.
The centre will be a standalone building once the project is completed, and a long-term agreement with the developer gives the county the option of buying the space for $23.5 million, 10 years into the deal.
The mall, originally known as the Sarnia Eaton Centre, opened in the early 1980s.
The total cost of the redevelopment project on the downtown site was estimated previously at $80 million to $100 million.
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