The land occupied by Staples in the busy McCallum and Millstream roads area of Langford has been bought by retail giant and immediate neighbour Costco for $14 million.
Costco Wholesale Canada Ltd.’s plans for its acquisition in the rapidly growing West Shore are not yet public.
Langford’s population spiked to 46,584 in the 2021 census, up by 31.8 per cent from 2016.
The Costco warehouse store and other large outlets nearby have become a destination beyond the West Shore, attracting shoppers from throughout Greater Victoria.
Staples remains at the 789 McCallum Rd. site, previously owned by a numbered company with a Vancouver address matching that of the Cressey Development Group and showing a Cressey executive as a director.
Spokespersons for Cressey, Staples and Costco were not immediately available to comment on Thursday about the sale, which took place in October.
Costco paid $14 million for the Staples site, which is assessed at $11.9 million, according to B.C. Assessment records.
The sale added 2.3 acres (0.93 hectares) to Costco’s land holding next door, assessed at just under $36 million.
Costco’s Greater Victoria warehouse store, parking lot, gas station and tire centre occupy 13.8 acres (5.584 hectares).
Graham Smith, senior vice-president at Colliers Victoria, who was not involved in the sale, noted that the McCallum-Millstream commercial area is consistently busy. He pointed to strong residential growth in the capital region.
“If you look around the region, it’s really hard to add commercial space in Greater Victoria.”
Demand is growing and “we are not really keeping up with commercial retail supply,” he said.
Costco was developed several years ago for a certain size of a population and level of annual sales, he said, adding that the company is “obviously surpassing those thresholds.”
Smith said he doesn’t know what Costco is planning to do with the Staples site, but speculated the company could use it to relocate some of the services in the main existing building, or it could dismantle the Staples building and re-purpose it.
“If you look at the municipalities in the region, there aren’t very many that you can still do traditional retail like this,” Smith said.
“We’re coming to the point where there really won’t be many of these sites available and there will be increasing densification of them.
“At this point, the West Shore, Langford in particular, has continued to be able to accommodate these larger users.”
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