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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The former location of the uptown Extra Foods is getting a major facelift.

The 45,000-square-foot building on the corner of Range Lake Road and Old Airport Road, owned by Polar Developments and vacated by the grocery store three years ago, is being refashioned by contractor Clark Builders as a shopping mall called Center Ice Plaza.

Spencer Decorby, project manager for Polar Developments, points to a skylight planned for the Center Ice Plaza, currently under construction. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

The shopping centre will have with room for 10 retail shops varying in size between 735 and 7,300 square feet, plus three retail kiosks.

Its south mezzanine already has a confirmed tenant.

"The Stanton Territorial Health authority is putting their finance administration division in about two thirds of it," said Spencer Decorby, project manager for Polar Developments.

The health authority will move into the 4,400-square-foot space in mid-summer, he added. It is getting ready to start its tenant improvements in conjunction with the territorial government.

The rest of the new plaza promises to be a hotbed of retail activity.

Pierre Lepage, owner of Chef Pierre's Catering Service, will move L'Heritage to the plaza's north mezzanine, with seating for 175 people: 75 seats for a lounge and the remaining 100 for fine dining.

Lepage plans to rebrand the restaurant as L'Heritage Mediterranean Restaurant and offer dishes from southern France as well as Italy and Spain. He's even planning an outdoor patio facing Range Lake.

On the bottom floor, Lepage will open NICO's Market, named after his step-granddaughter, which will take up a large chunk of the building - some 7,200 square feet of it, in all.

Family Vision Centre, a tenant of the building in the northeast corner for the last seven years, will stay.

"The mall itself will be ready this summer," said Decorby. "All the public common areas, all the new upgrades to the structure itself like the skylight, the facelift on the front of the building."

Polar is confident more businesses will follow suit, said Decorby.

"We are in negotiation with a variety of different retail groups," he said. "I, at this point, can't speak to those particularly."

Decorby said the project has created work for between 40 and 50 people, including subtradesmen, most of them from Yellowknife.

In addition to the main plaza, Clark has been busy preparing the new Bank of Montreal location.

Construction is slated to wrap up on Aug. 24. The new building is 2,000 square feet larger than BMO's present Yellowknife branch, located in the Centre Square Mall.

One week later, the new branch will open, creating two new full-time staff positions as well as one part-time position.

BMO will spend $3.2 million to provide a number of features, including wheelchair access, three extra teller counters, 15 private offices, coffee and water for clients, a seating area, plus drive-through ABM service and branch service on Saturdays.

In addition to weather, finding the right people to carry out special jobs on the building was tough, said Dave Brothers, general manager of Clark Builders, which is also in charge of the BMO construction project.

"Masonry and stucco trade - those were two areas where we couldn't find anyone," said Brothers. "There's nobody in town that even does stucco."

To complete the plaza project, Polar has sold the lot between the plaza and Tim Hortons to Lube-X, which will be making its Yellowknife debut.

"Our goal is to be open for the fall oil-change season, so people can put winter oil in their cars before it gets too cold out," said Decorby.

Decorby added the new plaza signals a shift in the layout of Yellowknife.

"The town is growing and changing in a lot of ways," he said.

"Our property, the way we see it, is going to be the new centre artery of what we're calling 'uptown,' where all of the businesses up Old Airport Road meet all of the suburbs from in behind."