Saturday November 2, 2019 ~ SOOKE [updated]
by Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
Deep within the 2018 Christmas holiday season the owners of Mom’s Cafe put their treasured restaurant up for sale. Now it’s past Halloween 2019 and the search for a buyer continues.
About 50 sets of prospective buyers have inquired about or visited the property in that time. There was one firm offer but that fell through due to the prospective purchaser’s financing falling through.
Owners Tom and Elaine Dee recently agreed to have the For Sale sign affixed boldly to the right of the main door, getting the listing out of cyberspace alone and out into full view. The asking price for the business and property is now $770,000 — down from $810,000 as was the case in January 2019. The price drop came in the last two months.
With the sign on the front of the building now things have moved more quickly. “Initially it was let’s just see if we can get it sold and not have the patrons too concerned, says listing Realtor Eamon Coll of Sutton Westcan Realty. “We didn’t want to get the public to be overly concerned with an icon like that. But it probably helped now with the signage and more exposure. Once the property was relisted the other one (an adjacent investment property) went quickly,” said Coll.
“It’s a bit of an icon,” says Coll. “We hope is that it continues along as the icon that it is, for the Sooke area. All indications are that it probably will,” he told West Shore Voice News on November 2. He adds that there is presently a contract for sale on the table. “We are expecting it to be selling as a restaurant and not be torn down.”
The 2,279 sq.ft. 65-seat restaurant features booth seating and service of breakfast, lunch and dinner. With its funky throwback-to-the-60s decor (substantially remodelled in 2006), Mom’s has a solid reputation among tourists who come to Sooke for the day, or who stop in on their way to or from parts further west after hiking, fishing or sightseeing. The listing says it is a high-traffic area.
But the truest value of this commercial property may well be the land which is 0.56 acres. The present building offers 2,295 sq ft and the lot is 11,761 sq ft. With a continued demand for multi-family housing in the Sooke region, the property is already zoned for development as commercial-residential mixed-use, such as a four- or five-storey residential buildout over top of commercial. The lot is zoned as C-2 (commercial mixed use).
Being situated in the town core but interfacing both community structures (Legion, community hall) and older residential, any development of this property would set a new phase of Sooke commercial/residential activity in motion.
At the corner of Shields Road and Eustace Road, the property is in the immediate town core vicinity of the Sooke Cenotaph and Legion as well as the old Sooke Community Hall.
Behind the restaurant is an additional lot with house at 6735 Eustace Road which sold this summer to a Victoria-area investor/developer, says Realtor Eamon Coll of Sutton Realty. He sold that property (which includes a house that is suitable for demolition) in a co-marketing manner with the Mom’s property, thinking that perhaps one buyer would be interested in both properties for a larger mixed-use development.
“Like any buyer, someone will fall in love with the property and things will move quickly,” said Realtor Eamon Coll back in January of this year. “From there the process can take a couple of months, for commercial due diligence and dealing with the municipal paperwork process. Zoning already in place is a huge time saver there,” he said. | MLS #414822