CANADA SITE FIGHT: ANOTHER WAL-MART ON THE WAY IN B.C.
Topics: | | | Canada
Wal-Mart to build Williams Lake Supercentre [Williams Lake Tribune (Canada)]
The world’s largest retailer announced Monday it is building an 118,000-square foot Supercentre on the construction site on South Lakeside Drive.
The project is expected to create 200 construction jobs, and the store is projected to employ more than 200 people for the community, Wal-Mart Canada director of corporate affairs Kevin Groh said.
“The development of a new Wal-Mart Supercentre represents an investment in excess of $30 million,” he said. “We are excited to be investing locally and thank the town for welcoming us.”
The Supercentre store, expected to open in late 2009, will carry the general merchandise of a traditional Wal-Mart store, and will include a grocery component with fresh produce, meat, baked goods, and meals to go.
The store will also be one of the chain’s HE (high efficiency) prototype stores, expected to use 30 per cent less energy than a traditional Wal-Mart store.
Features include LED lighting in a a number of locations, low-flow water fixtures, reflecting roof membranes to cut peak-load cooling needs, and using waste heat from refrigerators to heat the store.
André Chevigny, partner with Pioneer Family Land Partnership, said he’s excited that Wal-Mart is finally happening.
“The big thing is we’ve been waiting a long time to have this thing become a reality and it’s finally happening,” he says. “It’s taken a lot of energy, a lot of resources to put it together and we’re just really excited and proud of it happening.”
He says Wal-Mart will create jobs and keep business and money in town.
He says WesBild Shopping Centre did a study about a year ago, which found that about $40 million was leaving Williams Lake every year and going to Kamloops and Prince George.
Pioneer, he says, is now working diligently to get as much of the construction done before the cold weather comes.
“For us, we’re just excited,” Chevigny says. “We were finally able to have the announcement. Every time I run into people over the last 18 months, they’re asking me when it’s going to happen, if it’s going to happen, or they heard it’s off, and we’ll believe it when we see it.”
Chevigny says residents can now believe it and only have to look across the hill on South Lakeside to see the proof that the mega-store is on its way.
“For the last three weeks or so, we’ve been moving dirt, but we couldn’t physically announce it until they gave us the go-ahead,” he says. “Well, they finally did.”
About 470,000 cubic metres of dirt started to be cleared in early September to make way for Wal-Mart.
The current first phase of development includes building for the major store. Phase 2 will be for the lands and the commercial area, and phase 3 is slated for residential.
The City announced in March the it would begin roadwork necessary to accommodate Wal-Mart’s criteria for building a store in the city.
The City will spend $1 million this year for extended services on Highway 20, improvements on South Lakeside Drive and realignment of Hodgson Road as part of Stage 1 of the Pioneer big-box development, according to a city staff report.
The funds will be self-borrowed over five years from a development cost charge reserve in the five-year capital plan.
In addition, council approved an annual budget allocation of $200,000 each year between 2009 and 2013 to provide further extended services to Highway 20 and South Lakeside Drive in expectation of further development.
“Our residents couldn’t hope for more,” mayor Scott Nelson said. “Our residents are looking forward to the convenience and the enhancement of Williams Lake as a major regional shopping centre and the more than 200 new jobs it will create.”
Posted by Luke West on Tuesday, October 07, 2008
