Light at the end of the tunnel: Elliot Lake retail development aiming for spring opening.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: CONSTRUCTION

Pearson Plaza in Elliot Lake is on track to be completed and open for business in the spring of 2016.

Three years in the making, the $3.5-million shopping centre development started in 2012 and was scheduled to be complete a year later.

Site preparation for Pearson Plaza, named for the nearby Lester B. Pearson Memorial Park, was undertaken by J.I. Enterprises in the fall of 2012, and a tender for its development was awarded to Barrie-based McCowan & Associates that same year.

But the project faced a number of delays along the way that pushed the completion date back.

Looking back, William Elliott, general manager of the Elliot Lake and North Shore Corporation for Business Development (ELNOS), said the organization was "overly optimistic" that the development could be completed in such a short timeline.

"You took a mountain and your plan was, in a community that's all hills, to blow up the mountain to create a nine-acre flat site and build a new mall on it, and we thought, 'Oh, we can do that in a year,'" Elliott mused. "In retrospect, we were a little " aggressive."

A number of factors contributed to the delay, many of which were beyond ELNOS' control and directly related to the challenges of development in Northern Ontario, he added.

"When you don't have a ready supply of anything here, everything's got to be brought in, whether that's materials, whether that's equipment, whether that's personnel," Elliott said. "It's not like in southern Ontario where, if you need an extra 10 guys for the day, you can pull them off another job site, or if you need a piece of equipment for a couple of hours you can float it in and send it back."

Developers are reluctant to build during the wintertime because of the added expense, and part of the project had to be redesigned, which extended the timeline, he added.

The delays have also meant added costs to the tenants that are waiting to move into the new space, especially the Foodland grocery store, which is currently operating out of an 8,000-square-foot repurposed community hall.

But by late October, that was all "water under the bridge," Elliott said, and the contractors were well on their way.

The shopping centre's design is now comprised of two stages: in phase one, 60,000 square feet of space will be developed, and phase two calls for 30,000 square feet of future development that is yet to be determined.

The project is still meeting the original three requirements of the community: build a one-level...