THUNDER BAY — The demolition of Victoriaville Mall for the rejuvenation of the south core will get underway later than planned – in early 2025 rather than late this year.
According to a spokesperson, it's because City of Thunder Bay staff discovered some unexpected things while inspecting the mall prior to designing the first stage of the three-phase, $17.5 million project.
Under a plan approved by city council just over a year ago, stage one was renovations to prepare facades for exposure to the outdoors after the mall roof is removed.
Once renovations were finished under one contract, a second contract was to be awarded for the demolition phase, followed by a third contract next spring for the reconstruction of Victoria Avenue and public spaces.
But the timeline is now extended by about six months, which means road construction and building two plazas on Syndicate Avenue likely won't start until the second quarter of 2026.
This pushes the entire project's completion to the late summer or early fall of 2026.
Project manager Aaron Ward said Monday the city had hoped to post the first contract for waterproofing last month, but that didn't happen.
"While we were working through the design stage, we did what we refer to as destructive testing in the mall. So if you walk through, you may see some bricks removed, some holes in the floor, and so on. The team was verifying what's behind some of the walls and underneath the mall slab. And in several cases what we found was not what the team was expecting to find."
Ward explained that the 1970s-era drawings the city was referring to "weren't the most accurate" in the world.
"Thus, we found some surprises. The main thing is, there are some false walls in the mall. What you see as a storefront today is not actually an exterior wall. It's built like an interior wall."
He said this means there's more work to be done than what was planned in order to provide a proper exterior wall for some of the units before the roof is taken down.
"Some of those walls now need to come down in more scope than was initially thought to build a proper, sealed vapour barrier, a proper exterior wall."
Ward said that in light of the changed circumstances, the city is combining the waterproofing and demolition contracts into one, and it's expected to be issued for tender in October, likely meaning "the first shovel would be swung, so to speak" in January of 2025.
Although the contract for redeveloping Victoria Avenue is now planned to go to tender in the fourth quarter of 2025, because that's going into the winter months, road construction likely won't start until the second quarter of 2026.
Despite the delay, he said: "We we are still on track for our budget overall."
However, the city still intends to pursue contributions from FedNor and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, and possibly from another new federal funding stream.
