Open letter to mayor and councillors, I would like to add my voice to the other citizens of Richmond, especially those who live in the city centre who have begged you not to approve the Walmart Mall as proposed by the developers and city staff.
You will be destroying a priceless city viewscape for the benefit of a retailer like Walmart, which has the worst of reputations for how it keeps its prices so low. (Low pay and few benefits for its employees, as well as, sourcing its products from Asian sweatshops like the one that killed hundreds in a fire in Bangladesh.) Please do not do as you have in Steveston for Onni. The lovely waterside walkway that I walk most days has been irretrievably spoilt by the ugly concrete buildings and already cracking concrete pathways (no park, no new community library, as once promised).
If Onni's proposal is accepted, Steveston will have big retail stores and all the truck and vehicle traffic that this involves. Moncton Street will be transformed, and not for the better. Yet the city and Tourism BC continue to advertise the "gem" of historic Steveston to visitors.
The wildlife corridor along Alderbridge Way from Garden City Road to No. 4 Road and north to Alexandra Road should be preserved. The remains of the urban forest and the ESA should be preserved. What a mockery of the city's tree bylaw such destruction will be.
Please do the right thing for Richmond and its residents, not the developers for once.
Mary Phillips
Richmond
