Cochrane’s Old Town Hall site sold on Feb. 22 for $2.75 million to La Vita Land Inc., with plans to redevelop the site into a mixed-use space.
“This is a pretty exciting time for Cochrane and quite honestly a long time coming,” said Mayor Ivan Brooker at the press announcement on Feb. 23.
Council had four proposals from interested buyers for the site, with evaluation criteria including a strong understanding and use of the Town of Cochrane’s western heritage design guidelines, quality of the development concept and overall understanding of the vision and core objectives, and capacity of the development team to undertake the project.
La Vita Land Inc.’s proposal was accepted in the end because the company understood what the town wanted, Brooker explained.
“Council really didn’t have any ideas on what could fit on there, we just understood we wanted to have mixed use development that basically added value to Cochrane – they had that vision,” Brooker said.
The design concepts shown at the announcement included four-storey high buildings with retail, business and residential space.
“We at La Vita Land have a fairly big interest in the Town of Cochrane and it was a very big site and we thought perhaps we should take a look at it and figure out what to do to improve – we wanted to compliment downtown and not compete, so there are a great number of attributes that do just that,” said Kent Hystad, La Vita Land Inc. president.
The timeline for the project is currently unclear but Hystad said he would like to see construction start before the “freeze-up” this year.
“The (development) will be driven by the market, it will probably take years to build,” Hystad said. “When you are building 60 or 70,000 feet, it doesn’t go up overnight.”
Once developed, Brooker said the new space will be a nice addition to the town.
“This is the entrance feature, we wanted it to be beautiful when you first come down. We want it to be a welcoming feature to the Town of Cochrane,” Brooker said.
Since the destruction of the Old Town Hall site in 2008, the area off of Highway 1A between 2 Ave. W and Centre Ave. W has remained mostly vacant, and with the KFC recently moving to the new location in The Quarry, it opened up the opportunity to sell, Brooker said.
“Back in September, council got together and had a visioning session and quite honestly, we didn’t know what all could fit on this site and at the end of the day it came down to wanting to have a really good mixed-use development, something that really enforced and added value to Historic Downtown and kept people in the core – with this proposal, it hits the nail on the head with this vision,” Brooker said.
La Vita Land Inc.’s proposal was approved at the town council meeting on Feb. 22, carried unanimously. The space sold for approximately $1.276 million per acre.
“We wanted to create that place where locals or guests will remember when they went to Cochrane and enjoyed their time in the square – we wanted to create that enhancement with downtown,” said Pam MacInnis, La Vita Land Inc. partner.
Funds from the sale will go towards council priorities outlined in the Town of Cochrane 10 year financial strategy.
