The patio at 5109 Cordova Bay Road has water on one side and a parking lot that used to sit empty on the other. For three years, that was the whole story of the building. It closed as the Beach House Restaurant in August 2023, when longtime owner Kate Phoenix retired after a decade running the place, and it sat there mostly quiet while Cordova Bay residents kept asking the same question at community meetings: what happens to this building.
The answer arrived this year, and it changes more than one address. The Beach House Café is open again at that same spot, sharing the building with a gallery called Lifeways Indigenous Artistry, serving pastries, shawarma plates, salmon bagels, and baklava to people sitting on a patio that looks out at the water. That alone is a nice local update. What makes it matter more is what it connects to. This year, for the first time in a while, the two ends of Cordova Bay Village have a reason to be walked between rather than driven past, and that shift did not happen by accident.
What actually reopened, and under what terms
The building has a longer history than most people walking past it realize. Before it was the Beach House, it was McMorran's Pavilion, run by a family that came to Victoria in 1890 and had a hand in shaping Cordova Bay itself. McMorran's closed in 2010. Kate Phoenix bought the property, renamed it the Beach House, and reopened it in 2012. When she retired in 2023, the building went quiet, and it stayed that way while a new ownership group, Lifeways Investments Ltd., worked out what would come next.
Saanich council settled the question on October 27, 2025, unanimously approving a temporary use permit that let the building reopen as an art gallery and café on the main floor, with a kitchen, bar, and restaurant on the level below leading out to 1,500 square feet of patio. The gallery took up most of the main level, roughly 3,761 square feet, built to showcase First Nations and local art. Saanich Coun. Karen Harper made a point during the meeting of explaining what "temporary" actually means in practice.
"If it does, you can actually extend a temporary-use permit basically in perpetuity."
That is not a small distinction for a neighborhood that watched a beloved building sit vacant for three years. The permit runs three years by design, which gives Saanich and the operators room to see if the mix of gallery, café, and restaurant works before anyone commits further. Not everyone in the neighborhood was fully at ease with the word temporary. Cordova Bay Road resident Murray Robertson told council he liked the plan but flagged his one concern plainly during the hearing, noting the designation was listed as temporary. For residents, the practical upshot is simpler: the building is active again, right now, and worth walking down to.
The walk that finally makes sense
Here is the part that turns one reopening into a neighborhood story. The Beach House Café sits at the south end of the village core. A short walk or an easy bike ride north along the Lochside Regional Trail, which runs directly through the property, brings you to Mattick's Farm, the cluster of boutique shops that has anchored the middle of Cordova Bay for decades. The trail itself is part of the regional route connecting the Swartz Bay ferry terminal to downtown Victoria, and Mattick's Farm sits at roughly the midpoint, which is why cyclists have treated it as a rest stop for years.
What's actually there right now is a working village of fifteen small, independently run businesses: Red Barn Market for groceries, Adrienne's Restaurant & Tea Garden for lunch and tea service, The Gallery at Mattick's Farm for local art and jewellery, Seaberry Garden & Flower for plants and gifts, Waterlily Shoes, Lily Pad Lingerie, Liquor Plus, Market Collective, House of Hathor, Fowler Glass Studio, Cordova Bay Optometry, Cordova Hair & Barbershop, Pure Day Spa, Moden Matticks, and Paper Chain. That is not a category of shops. That is a specific, named list of who is actually open on any given afternoon, and it is the kind of texture that makes a neighborhood feel lived in rather than described.
A few minutes further along Cordova Bay Road sits Bill Mattick's Restaurant at Cordova Bay Golf Course, named for the same family that once ran a roadside produce stand where the shopping village now stands. Put the three points together, Beach House Café at the waterfront end, Mattick's Farm in the middle, Bill Mattick's near the golf course, and you have a walkable stretch of village that did not fully exist as a connected loop a few years ago.
The road connecting those points is also getting quieter, and that is not incidental to the story. Saanich council approved Bylaw No. 10276 this year, reducing maximum speed limits on residential streets across the municipality, and the Cordova Bay Association for Community Affairs has confirmed new signage and slower traffic are arriving on local streets in 2026, with additional phases planned. Separately, the association's planning committee has continued pressing Saanich for a traffic signal and pedestrian crosswalk at the Doumac Avenue and Cordova Bay Road intersection, arguing that the ongoing redevelopment of the Cordova Bay Plaza will bring more foot traffic through the village core and that the current road setup was not built for it. None of this guarantees a finished project by any particular date. What it tells you is that the street connecting the Beach House to Mattick's Farm to Bill Mattick's is being treated, by both the municipality and the neighborhood association, as a place people are meant to walk, not just drive through.
Fifty years of paying attention to this street
The organization pushing for that crosswalk has been at this for a while. The Cordova Bay Association for Community Affairs formed in 1976, and this year it marked fifty years with an evening at The Ridge Café on Cordova Bay Road, featuring live classical guitar and a chance for longtime residents to swap memories of the neighborhood's changes. That kind of institutional memory matters here. This is a group that has tracked development applications, traffic studies, and speed bylaws for half a century, twice a year, in a newsletter called The Cordovan that residents still read for updates on what is actually happening on their own street.
The association has already set the date for this year's Breakfast with Santa, planned for Sunday, December 6, at Bill Mattick's Restaurant at Cordova Bay Golf Course, continuing a tradition that gives families another reason to end up at that end of the village during the holidays. Combined with the annual Cordova Bay Day gathering and a recent matching grant that funded an interpretive sign at Doris Page Park, the pattern is consistent. The people who have been watching this street for decades keep finding small, specific ways to make it worth walking, not just driving.
What this adds up to
None of this is a single dramatic change. It is a reopened café, a gallery sharing its space, a list of shops that has stayed remarkably stable, a slower speed limit, and a community group celebrating fifty years of paying close attention. Taken separately, those are five small updates. Taken together, they describe a village that spent the last three years with a gap at one end and has spent this year closing it, on purpose, one decision at a time.
If you live in Cordova Bay, the practical version of this story is simple. The walk from the water to Mattick's Farm now has two working reasons to make it, not one, and the road in between is getting easier to cross on foot. That is worth knowing on a Saturday morning, whether you're headed for a pastry with an ocean view or a stop at Red Barn Market on the way home.
If you're curious about what any of this means for property in the area, or simply want a clearer read on how Cordova Bay is changing this year, FarupScott Group is always glad to talk it through.
