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Major Creekside restaurant space sells

Building purchased for more than $1.5 million
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Anchor Up This foreclosed property in Creekside has sold. Photo by John French

With its high-profile location at the corner of Highway 99 and Lake Placid Road the former Players Chophouse restaurant building should be a lucrative place to do business.

But over the last few years it has had three tenants — Morgan's, Players Chophouse and most recently Doc Brannigan's, which despite the best efforts of a group of Whistler business people didn't last.

Real estate agent Allan Jenner confirmed that the building recently sold for $1,568 million. Jenner said the sale was part of a court-ordered foreclosure and the building was appraised at $2.3 million as part of the foreclosure.

Ruby Jiang, the agent for the purchaser, said the deal isn't complete yet and the new owners aren't ready to share the plans they have for the space. Jiang said her client is looking at several possibilities.

While on paper it looks like great value for the new owner Jenner said it has been tough to generate consistent revenue in that large space. The Zen Sushi space just metres away also remains vacant. That restaurant space, across the pedestrian path from Dusty's, has been vacant since 2010. Jenner said the vacancy rate at Creekside is currently very high.

"It's hard to see that changing any time soon unless you can get tourists to come down there and spend some money," said Jenner.

While he had the listing Jenner looked into converting the space to offices so a new owner could take over a space with built-in revenue.

"There's not very many 6,000 square foot users for the two floors where you could put offices in," said Jenner. "If you tried to break it up into smaller spaces, maybe get two, three, four tenants in there you would have to change all the mechanical systems and put in hallways and the cost would go up and you would lose some of the space to hallways and vestibules and things like that."

The space includes 325 square metres (3,500 square feet) on the main floor plus another 214 square metres (2,300 square feet) on the second floor along with an underground parking and a storage area.

A significant amount of the real estate at Creekside is owned by Florida-based real estate investment trust CNL Lifestyle Properties, Inc. The company installed a way-finding sign beside the highway last winter to draw attention to the pedestrian village and shops at Franz's Trail.