Richmond - The Editor, Re: "Boxed In?" News, Oct. 11. The West Cambie Area Plan, which Richmond city council approved in , states the maximum floor area for the anchor store in the Alexandra Neighbourhood mall should be 100,000 square feet.
Richmond - The Editor, Re: "Boxed In?" News, Oct. 11. The West Cambie Area Plan, which Richmond city council approved in , states the maximum floor area for the anchor store in the Alexandra Neighbourhood mall should be 100,000 square feet.In contrast, the Walmart anchor store that's actually proposed for the mall there has a larger floor area of 161,188 square feet.Just the increase alone is bigger than an American football field - including end zones and with lots of space for teams on the sidelines.Similarly, the whole Walmart mall is larger than the West Cambie Area Plan had led us to expect. Oddly, though (and this is hard to get one's mind around), city staff wanted the mall developers to build much more square-footage than that, more than twice as much in fact.In short, the Walmart mall does not fit with the official plan for a "balanced community" in the Alexandra Neighbourhood. However, neither Walmart nor its partner should be the ones shouldering most of the blame.Jim WrightRichmond
