If you have been near the site of the former Zellers store on Northern Avenue in the past few days, you will have noticed signs reading "Danger Due to Demolition."
That entire plaza has become something of a landmark for the community (some of us old enough to remember shopping at that retail space when K-Mart was still in business), so naturally, our curiosity has been raised.
Is that portion of the Northern Avenue shopping plaza indeed being demolished?
Not exactly.
Our telephone calls and emails to Fengate Capital Management, the Burlington-based company which owns the plaza, had not been returned as of Thursday afternoon, but SooToday.com has been informed by an official with Montreal-based Delsan-AIM Demolition Services that the interior of the old Zellers store is being gutted and that "basically we're leaving an empty shell ready for anybody that would like to come in and retrofit the building to their liking."
"We don't know who the new tenants are…we just need to clean everything up for potential tenants," the Delsan-AIM official told us.
"It's a six-week project," he said.
The Delsan-AIM official told us the work would certainly not be underway if there were no potential new tenant(s) coming in.
The official told us Target will not be moving in, saying that retailer considers the Northern Avenue space as too small for its purposes.
The old Zellers location closed March 30, 2013.