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McMorran's Beach House in Cordova Bay closing next year,
property to be sold

McMorran’s Beach House is for sale and will close in April,
putting prime waterfront property on the market.

The municipality of Saanich already has a conditionally
accepted offer on part of the Cordova Bay Road property
which they will use as a park, but the remaining three
lots — two waterfront — are for sale.

The McMorran family property is an institution in Greater
Victoria, the site of thousands of weddings, celebrations
and meals since it opened in 1921. It has been family-owned
and operated by the McMorrans for the past 88 years.

But Wallace McMorran, the general manager of McMorran’s and
the grandson of founders George and Ida McMorran, said it
is too difficult to make the business profitable. The
family put in “millions” in the 1990s, he said, improving
the building and seismographically upgrading it. That
increased business but not enough.

“The return on the investment has been meager,” McMorran
said. “There was tremendous effort and support from the
community, but to be blunt, the restaurant industry is very
low in profitability, particularly given the expenses we
put in.”

Saanich has a conditional offer to buy the grassy lot at
5099 Cordova Bay Rd., essentially all the land south of the
existing legal beach access. The municipality paid $869,000
for the 566-square-metre lot that looks over Haro Strait
and will rezone it as parkland.

The offer came to the municipality on Thursday. They dealt
with it in-camera on Monday night and voted unanimously in
favour of buying the lot.

“This is a decision council can feel proud of turning
around so quickly. This type of opportunity — a vacant,
accessible, open waterfront lot — doesn’t come up very
often and it would have easily been snapped up by someone
wanting to build a huge house, or subdivide to two lots,”
Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard said.

The municipality has until Dec. 15 to take off its
conditions, which are another appraisal and checking for
environmental contamination. Lots with tear-down houses
along the waterfront side of Cordova Bay Road can sell for
over $1 million.

The final operating day for McMorran’s Beach House will be
Easter Sunday, which falls on April 4.

Charter’s Restaurant will close for the month of December
to provide service for the busy holiday season in the
Lookout Room banquet room. The restaurant will re-open in
January and will close permanently along with the Lookout
Room in April.

McMorran had hoped Saanich would buy the entire property
and use the renovated banquet area as a community centre.
But Leonard said there is “no rationale for the
municipality to own a restaurant or whatever the building
would be used for.”

The three properties will be publicly listed “in the low $3-
millions,” McMorran said.

McMorran would like to sell the waterfront lots together,
preferably as a package for redevelopment. He hopes that
will be a “contributing factor to the village core in the
community.”

It could be one of the biggest redevelopments the Cordova
Bay area has seen.

The land is zoned residential and commercial. Any
redevelopment would be carefully watched by the Cordova Bay
Community Association and council.

“Anyone wanting to change the land use or wanting more mass
there would require rezoning. It’s an incredibly sensitive
site that the community feels quite passionate about,”
Leonard said.

Roger Stonebanks of the Cordova Bay Residents Association
said the closure comes as a surprise to many “and with more
than a little sadness. Its history goes back to the 1920s
when the McMorran family started their beachfront Tea
Rooms. In the years since then it has been a prominent
feature of community life in Cordova Bay — the scene of
many wedding receptions, ballroom dances and community
meetings — as well as a restaurant and patio.”

Area residents will keep a close eye on redevelopment plans.

“Residents will look forward to a thorough community
consultation and input process including public meetings
for whatever will be proposed in its place. Whatever is
proposed will be examined closely by residents and it will
need to 'fit into' the neighbourhood,” Stonebanks said.

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