The commercial portion of the Erickson Farms subdivision is still partially under construction, but a growing number of businesses have already set up shop at the new retail space in Felida, officially called The Shops at Erickson Farms.
Two restaurants, a nail salon, an athletic facility, a real estate office, a dental practice and a preschool have all opened in the development’s four completed buildings, and four more businesses are on the way once the final two buildings are completed at the site, which is at Northwest Lakeshore Avenue at Northwest 106th Street: two more restaurants, another athletic facility and a shoe store.
The building at the southwest corner of the plaza is shared by StarCycle, The Nail Kitchen and Spa and Grapes ‘n Growlers. Owner Tom Mahoney said Grapes ‘n Growlers was the second business to open at the Erickson Farms site, just a few days after StarCycle in October 2017. They were joined a short time later by the Nail Kitchen.
The Felida Grapes ‘n Growlers is the second location for the taproom and restaurant; the original opened in 2015 in east Vancouver. Mahoney said he and the other owners had only loosely considered a second location, but the Felida site presented an opportunity that was too good to pass up.
“This reminded us a lot of our first location, as far as the community that surrounds it,” he said.
The Felida site has the same number of taps as the east Vancouver location, but the building is larger and includes an outdoor patio so guests can bring their dogs. Mahoney said the restaurant has been able to draw a good mix of families, retirees and younger guests from Erickson Farms and other surrounding subdivisions.
“It’s been great — this community has embraced us,” he said. “They’ve really needed some other options.”
Red Barn Coffee House opened in mid-2018 in the plaza’s southeast building; the coffee shop and restaurant also features a patio and drive-thru.
A dental practice called the Dentist@Felida moved into one of the offices in the building on the west side of the plaza in August, and the Lakeshore Learning Center opened in the site’s northeastern building in September.
Lakeshore director and co-owner Dawn Martin said she and the other founders thought that the location would be ideal for an early learning center that could serve Erickson Farms and other growing communities in the Felida neighborhood.
“Child care is hard to find in Vancouver,” she said.
Martin’s family also lives in the Erickson Farms neighborhood, so she said she was able to reach out to local parents and generate interest long before the center finally opened, and as a result, the 3-month-old learning center is already fully enrolled until fall 2019.
“Many families were loyal and waited a long time for us to open,” she said. “We are three months old and have already over 90 enrollment. It is very exciting.”
Real estate, Mexican food
Windermere Stellar also announced in September that it would be opening an office in one of the western building spaces, staffed by established agents from the Vancouver area. It’s the fourth Windermere office in the area, after two in central Vancouver and one on Mill Plain east of Interstate 205.
“When I heard Windermere was opening an office in the Felida area, I knew it would present a unique opportunity to help our clients even more,” Felida office agent Kale Dunning said in a press release at the time. “I’ve been a broker in Vancouver for 17 years, and over that time, Windermere has always had the highest producing and most professional Realtors in the market. I’m excited to be associated with that.”
Two buildings are still under construction: one in the center of the plaza and another at the northwest corner, adjacent to the Lakeshore Learning Center. According to a flyer from Colliers, the site’s leasing agent, the central building is slated to house a Los Portrillos Mexican restaurant and bar.
The commercial area will also soon be home to Affinity Fitness, Arktana Shoes and Thai Little Home, all of which have signed leases and are expected to open soon, according to Tamara Fuller, vice president at the Vancouver Colliers office.
Once the newcomers are in place, Colliers will have just 6,400 square feet of space left to fill in the northwestern building before the site is fully occupied, Fuller says.
The Erickson Farms subdivision was built on 50 acres of former farmland owned by Vinton and Helen Erickson, who reached a deal in 2005 to redevelop the property for housing. The farm closed in 2006, but the redevelopment plan ended up being shelved when the housing market collapsed.
The plans eventually resumed once the market began to recover, and construction on the first phase of the project began in 2012 with the demolition of the 110-year-old Erickson farmhouse, according to a 2014 story in The Columbian. Construction of the retail space along Lakeshore Avenue began in 2016, Fuller said.
