Boxcar drops into history at Roundhouse
A boxcar is lowered gingerly into place at Bayview Place’s Roundhouse development in Vic West on Tuesday. It’s one of two cars brought here from Parksville that could be used for clothing stores and other retail space. The Roundhouse, a national historic site, was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway to service rolling stock from the E&N Railway.
Two well-worn boxcars will be finding new life at Bayview Place’s Roundhouse development in Vic West, where there is a plan rolling to turn them into retail space.
It’s an appropriate destination for the two cars, made in 1957, since the 20-acre site includes the Roundhouse — a national historic site — built by the Canadian Pacific Railway to service rolling stock from the E&N Railway.
The cars were brought here from Parksville, and one was lifted gingerly into place Tuesday afternoon by a crane. They were bought for $10,000 apiece from the Canadian Railroad Historical Association, and the money will go toward a railway museum in Coombs.
The car set on the hilly part of the property was decommissioned in the early 1990s, the other in the late 1990s. The latter was one of a number of CP Rail cars that carried plywood from the Vic Ply mill in Esquimalt, and was the last to have been used at the mill before it closed in 1994. It also has the distinction of being the last E&N car of its kind in existence.
The cars will be an important part of the project. “The vision is that they will form part of the ‘site animation,’ which will include pop-up retail space,” said Bayview Place spokesman Paul Corns. “Perhaps service spaces, a coffee counter and that kind of thing.”
He said the box-car retailers could change from time to time. “For instance, you might have a clothing store occupy it for three or four months, then have a graphic-design installation in there for another two or three months.”
Corns said at least another two or three boxcars could be brought in as the development progresses.
The Bayview project has two residential buildings completed and a third, the 17-storey Encore building, underway and due for completion next spring. “Our focus now is switching to the fourth building, which is going to be farther west on the site, down toward the Spinnakers location,” Corns said.
The Roundhouse is one of five historic structures on the property, and is seen as a centrepiece in 40,000 square feet of retail space.
“The whole premise of bringing that rail history forward and making it part of the interpretive program of the site is a big part of what our focus is,” Corns said.
The concept will unfold over a multi-year time frame, Corns said. “A lot of that is dependent on market and various approval processes that you need to go through.”
Ken Mariash, owner of Focus Equities and master developer of the Bayview site, has taken the railroad theme further by becoming an advocate for service on the E&N rail corridor between Vic West and Langford.
“A large part of Ken’s focus isn’t just on the site itself, it’s really about how the site connects to the broader community,” Corns said. “We know that in order to make those retail spaces work and all of that public-realm space work, we need to get more people on site and preferably we’d like to do that without adding more traffic to the road.
“So having that commuter rail service out to the West Shore is certainly part of the vision for the overall site.”