Smart!Centres is well on its way to lining up a list of tenants for its mall on the 19400-block on the north side of Lougheed Highway in Pitt Meadows – even though it’s yet to file an application with the City of Pitt Meadows.

Future Shop, Price Smart, PetSmart, Toys R Us, Indigo, Swiss Chalet, Montana’s restaurant, TD Bank, CIBC and Tim Hortons are just some of the retailers that could be in Pitt Meadows’s latest new mall, west of Meadow Gardens Golf Course.

The names are shown on a site plan as the development company tries to put together the project, which could total 475,000 square feet of retail space -– 55,000 more than Meadowtown Centre.

The plans don’t bother Coun. Deb Walters, who says it’s just good business to line up clients before seeking municipal approval.

“I’m not surprised by that. It’s just good business sense to have your eggs all in a row,” Walters said recently.

The plan shows a road bordering the new mall on the north. While it’s identified as a “future municipal road,” it could be the North Lougheed Connector, which is proposed to run from the Abernethy Connector at 203rd Street and 128th Avenue, to just west of Harris Road.

To have the road built would require taking land out of the Agricultural Land Reserve. The city has applied to take 19 acres out for that purpose.

The road is still a long way off, according to Walters, because the city does not have the money to build it.

“The North Lougheed Connector is a only a pipe dream, really. We don’t have the funds to put that in.”

The city has also been lobbying the provincial government to build an interchange at Harris Road.

Brian Bekar, owner of Mark’s Work Wearhouse in Maple Ridge, bought an acre-sized parcel just to the west of where the big mall is to go. He plans on making an application for a free-standing store in about six months and said he has good relations with Smart!Centres. Pitt Meadows city has also said there will have to be access from the big mall on to the Mark’s store without having to go on to the Lougheed Highway.

“I think it’s going to be the main shopping hub for all of Maple Ridge,” Bekar said.

“They didn’t allow Albion. They should have. Now Pitt Meadows is going to be the hub and Maple Ridge is going to be the bedroom,” with no commercial taxes, he added.

Bekar intends to keep his Maple Ridge store open as well as open a new location in Pitt Meadows.

The site plans are also OK with Pitt Meadows Mayor Don MacLean.

“They’ve got to get some expression of interest from potential tenants.”

For Coun, Doug Bing, though, Smart!Centres might be assuming too much.

“They’re being a bit presumptive, I think, that whatever they have planned will be approved.”

Bing said he hasn’t heard when Smart!Centres will approach council, saying the company met with council about a year ago. Bing said he gets many calls from people asking about what’s happening at the site.

While a new power shopping centre will almost certainly go up on the site, its appearance remains to be seen. But councillors want something better than Meadowtown Centre, where black top predominates.

“Whatever goes in there is going to have to be smart and it’s going to have to benefit the community,” Walters said.

Smart!Centres, though, objected to Pitt Meadows’s guidelines, which call for intensive landscaping and ground infiltration of stormwater.

In a Jan. 10 letter to the city, Pitt Meadows Shopping Centres (a subsidiary of Smart!Centres) land development manager Glen Bury said the requirements are “far in excess of comparable municipal standards found elsewhere in our region and in communities in which we have developed similarly sized shopping centres.”

Bury said Pitt Meadows’s landscaping requirements will have a “detrimental” effect on the mall design and hurt traffic flow. The requirement for landscaped areas to be built after every six parking stalls won’t meet the requirements of large retailers, which need four to five stalls for every 1,000 sq. feet of buildable area.

The policy places “unreasonable expectations” on the developer and planner, Bury said.

Bing, though, didn’t want to change the guidelines, saying Smart!Centres should meet the requirements – and not have the city change its guidelines to accommodate the developer.

MacLean said the city may have to make some concessions. It’s a compromise between black top and having enough space for their needs. But like Walters, MacLean didn’t want another mall resembling Meadowtown Centre.

“We are less than happy with Meadowtown. There’s too much black top.”

The application for the road right of way remains with the Agricultural Land Commission, said a spokesman. She didn’t know when a decision would be reached.

MacLean said early this year the new road is being to built to divert traffic off Old Dewdney Trunk Road and thus make life easier for farmers.

“It’s a transportation route. It’s not a way of getting a back door to Wal-Mart.

“It’s an imaginary line and a conceptual line at this point,” MacLean added Monday.

Smart!Centres, one of whose major tenants is Wal-Mart, didn’t return phone calls.