After three years of waiting, it’s finally here. Signature Support Services has been given the green light to start work on its newest bottle depot inside the old Peavey Mart building on 105 Avenue. Executive Director Darrin Stubbs says he’s relieved to finally be able to start renovations.
“We knew that we were going to come out in the end and we were gonna build a bottle depot here… It was just a matter of going through the motions and whatever legal things that came up with us. We knew we’d get through it so we just held out and here we are today and ready to get it going.”
Signature Support Services currently owns two bottle depots in Grande Prairie. Since 2015, It has planned to move its operation on 96 Avenue and all of the day programs for adults with developmental disabilities held there to the new location.
In October 2017 and again in May 2018, Springfield Capital Inc., which Stubbs says wanted to buy a neighbouring building, appealed and tried to stop construction from continuing.
“We had a property owner, somebody who was interested in the property next to us, that their dream of what they wanted to put up didn’t coincide with the bottle depot being beside them. We were permitted use and council had already decided that a bottle depot in this area is an appropriate use and so they appealed.”
Both appeals were ultimately denied. Now that construction can begin again, Stubbs says around $1.5 million in renovations will need to be put into the building.
If everything goes well he expects the bottle depot to be up and running by the summer.
