Photos of Cloverdale Brick Yard Station

There is a bit of interest in the new strip mall going up in Cloverdale - Brick Yard Station - so I took some photos. Brick Yard Station is on the corners of Highway 10 and Highway 15, across the street from the Husky (Mohawk) gas station and about a block west of 176th Street. There are a couple of entrances to the parking lot from 57th Avenue and there is also an entrance/exit on Highway 10. The thing is if you exit onto Highway 10 you will be heading westbound.

Starbucks and Clancy's Meat Co both have coming soon signs on them but no date indicated when they'll be opening.

Staples is opening on Saturday May 5 2012. There will be 10% off everything on the store on opening day. They will hold their official grand opening a week or 2 later. Sorry don't recall which date. Will post when I know for sure.

Click on the photo to see a larger view.

This is the street view from Highway 15, also known as the Cloverdale Bypass, looking south. Sign shows the businesses that are opening in the Brick Yard Station. That's an electric box with the old photo etched on it.

Some of the buildings have old photos of Cloverdale incorporated into the design as murals. Also old train ties worked into the landscaping.

Those are train ties worked in with the brick patio walkway in front of Starbucks.

Starbucks opening soon! Just how soon is unknown!

Photos on the building beside Starbucks showing railroad workers and the other is a photograph taken in downtown Cloverdale, appears to be from the 60's.

More old Cloverdale photos turned into murals.

Staples is at the far end of the strip mall, closer to Highway 10. Unknown yet what stores are going in beside it.

Clancy's Meat Co. is on the same row of stores as Staples but its closer to the 57th Avenue entrance/exit.

Stores still under construction in the Brick Yard Station.

Cloverdale's Brick Yard Station

For the past year or so construction has been underway on a new shopping mall in Cloverdale on the northwest corner of Highway 10 and Highway 15. Across the street from the Husky/Mohawk station and about a block west of 176th Street.

Banner shows several stores will be opening there: Staples, Starbucks, CIBC, Vera's Burgers, Clancy's Meats, etc.

About a week ago they paved the parking lot. Today it looks like they're putting in some big paver stones on the side next to 57th Avenue, near where Starbucks will be. The whole area is still surrounded by a blue temporary fence, though they had a few sections down today to work on the pavers.

The Staples sign is now on the building with an opening soon banner. I checked the website but there is no mention of what date "soon" means.

When Stapes opens for business they usually have some good opening day specials, though the numbers are limited. The Staples in Langley opened up about 12 years ago. We were interested in getting a leather office chair for $99 and my father also wanted the same chair. I think they had 25 available. It was summertime and we went down around 6 or 6:30am to line up. There were about 10 or 15 other people in front of us. Most of whom wanted the laptop computer that was on sale, available for the first 20 people I think. The other opening day special was each person would receive a box of paper. Yup, a whole box. That is 10 reams of paper each holding 500 sheets (8x11).

As the line up grew a woman somewhere further back in line kept showing up to count people ahead of her. I guess she must have been around the cut off for 50. About 20 or 30 minutes before the doors opened a couple of employees came outside. Amazingly enough a few people who had been sitting in their cars doing whatever now suddenly showed up to join their friends/family already in line. The employees had tickets for each of the door crasher specials printed out in the exact amount of how many were available - according to how they'd advertised in their flyer. They came down the line and asked what you wanted. We each got a ticket for the office chair plus one each for the box of paper. Further back in the line I heard arguments break out. There was that woman who had been counting the people in line in front of her. There were no free boxes of paper left and she was arguing that she'd counted the people in line ahead of her and knew that she was inside 50. But nope. Once the employee's tickets were handed out they were gone.

We went inside and each bought a chair and put the box of free paper (kind of heavy) on each chair and rolled it out of there. Fortunately we'd brought the truck! As we were loading out items in the back we could hear people in the line up saying: "Look. They got 2 chairs and 2 boxes of paper."

First come first served!

I've noticed for subsequent openings of Staples around the Lower Mainland that the opening day special now consists of one ream of paper for free.

Out of those 2 free boxes we did give away a few reams but that paper lasted us for many years.

Rush hour traffic jam in Cloverdale June 28

There's a bit of a traffic snarl in Cloverdale right now at the intersection of Highway 10 and Highway 15. It appears a semi truck and trailer rig were in the left hand turn lane on Highway 10, ready to turn onto the Cloverdale Bypass and head northbound. Truck stalled.

I heard it on the news so I walked the dogs over. What I saw was another tractor from the same company showed up to assist. They disconnected the trailer and left it there in the left hand turn lane and attached a chain or cable onto the stalled tractor. I guess he was planning to tow it to the parking lot of the old Cloverdale Mall. Light changes and they turn left. Except unfortunately the cable snapped. Sproing! I heard that!

The tractor has now stalled in front of both lanes of Highway 10 traffic heading west. Tractor has not blocked the left hand turn lanes heading south on Highway 15 nor the right hand turn lane that borders the Husky gas station. The crazy thing is drivers start honking. Hmm. I don't think that big truck is going anywhere. Want to get out and help push it?

The driver of the tractor that's mobile pulls over to inspect the situation. I guess there was no resurrecting that chain. He decides to abandon the stalled truck and circles around to collect the trailer that's still in the left hand turn lane.

I walked down Highway 10 and traffic is backed up as far as I can see. When I circled around Cloverdale I saw cars leaving Highway 10 at 176A or 177B Streets and making their way down 57th Avenue so they could get around the stalled truck.

The stalled truck was still there when I walked past 10 minutes later. Perhaps they should call a big tow truck?