Steve Marshall is building a new Ford dealership.
The new facility will be located on the corner of the Island Highway and Woodburn Road, next door to Marshall’s Mazda dealership in north Campbell River.
Tom Dishlevoy, architect for the project, told city council at its Monday night meeting the new Ford facility will complement the Mazda dealership and incorporate a similar beach theme landscape.
“The landscape features at the two ends of the site represent docks, or piers,” said Dishelevoy to represent that they are “hard at work in a waterfront community.”
The docks, which will be set up in the two far corners of the dealership, will feature display vehicles.
Landscape plans also include the use of trees, including street trees which will make up part of the city’s Woodburn Road improvements.
“We worked fairly hard on our use of trees,” Dishlevoy said. “There’s trees in behind to create a tree-lined driveway and they also screen the service department. There’s also small trees to separate the Ford and Mazda dealerships. We’re attempting to break up the large display of vehicle storage and vehicles there for servicing.”
But while the team is working on some degree of separation between the two dealerships, Dishlevoy said there will likely be some shared space, namely the Mazda access.
Access to the Ford dealership is also proposed from the Island Highway and Woodburn Road.
Coun. Charlie Cornfield questioned why there is no proposed sidewalk for pedestrians along the Woodburn driveway.
“If I’m waiting for awhile I may want to take a walk down into Baikie Island,” Cornfield noted.
He also suggested that Woodburn residents may want to take a walk down to the dealership.
Dishlevoy said he would take that into consideration before construction gets underway.
Once built, the new dealership is expected to have large floor-to-ceiling windows in the front, with a millennium tower down the middle of the dealership and an arch bearing the Ford logo.
A second building is proposed for the southwest corner of the site to function as storage, but may be developed as a future phase.
The main building will contain offices, a showroom and a vehicle servicing/maintenance area. The back half, as well as the south side of the building, will accommodate vehicle servicing bays. The showroom and offices will occupy the front of the facility.
Mayor Andy Adams told Dishlevoy and Ford representative Karl Edrup, who joined Dishlevoy in his presentation to council, to pass along his appreciation to Ford owner Steve Marshall.
“Please pass along my (thanks) to Mr. Marshall for his confidence in investing in our community,” Adams said.
Coun. Ron Kerr said he will be glad to have a brand-new building on a lot that’s currently sitting empty.
“It’s great to see that lot will be cleaned up with a sparkling new building,” Kerr said.
The rest of council agreed and approved awarding the Steve Marshall group a major development permit, on the advice of city staff.
“This scale and type of development is an appropriate form of development of this strip for the foreseeable future,” wrote Matthew Fitzgerald, planner, in a report to council.