BANFF – An architectural eyesore surrounded by the imposing bare concrete walls of Banff’s Cascade Plaza is finally being developed after more than 25 years.
The owner of the property, Josephine Tsu, is moving ahead with the long-awaited development of a restaurant at 204 Wolf St. at the north end of Bear Street to fill in the gaping, awkwardly shaped hole in a highly visible downtown location.
Town of Banff planners say a former house that was later turned into the Timbers restaurant was demolished last week.
“They’re starting construction after years of plodding through the development and building review process,” said Darren Enns, manager of development services for the Town of Banff. “It will be nice to finally have this project. It will match the woonerf in terms of bookmarking the end of Bear Street.”
In 2012, Tsu was granted a development permit for a mixed-use commercial building, which would have included two restaurants and a retail store. Now, the site will contain an eating and drinking establishment only.
Tsu won the rights to develop the property through the Town’s commercial development allotment process, with success in lotteries in 2004 and 2005.
Enns said the development permit had been renewed since first getting approval from the Municipal Planning Commission six years ago.
“There comes a time when you can’t keep renewing it, and while she was making progress, we told her to speed it up and get it done, or lose the development permit and allotment,” he said.
The parcel of land is an irregular shaped, five-sided polygon property on the north side of the intersection of Wolf and Bear streets.
It has long been believed that the site came about that way because of an unresolved disagreement between the local mall developer and the former owner of that piece of property in the late 1980s.
The developer was not able to purchase that piece of property. Parks Canada approved Cascade Plaza shortly before Banff was incorporated as an Alberta municipality, but it wasn’t built until after incorporation between 1990 and 1992.
Tsu, who owns the Silver Dragon Restaurant on Spray Avenue, was unavailable for comment by the time the Outlook went to press.
