Editor:
I was at the Tsawwassen First Nation's proposed mall development public information meeting last Wednesday night. It was amateur hour, as if put together by a first-year marketing class.
If the TFN wants to build goodwill and support for this huge development that will have a massive effect on Ladner and Tsawwassen, it should find some new advisors.
There was no presentation. The benefit of a live speaker and a focused presentation to the gathered throng would be that everyone gets the same information at the same time. At this meeting, you had to find someone to ask questions. And more often than not, they didn't know the answer, or they were robotically repeating the practiced mantra.
We were told there are two markets for this new development: 1) Specialty shops, unique in B.C., will bring in people from around the Lower Mainland; 2) the service and mixed retail shops will serve the people of Ladner and Tsawwassen.
A couple of points: those shops had better be very special to drag them in from around the Lower Mainland. Methinks it's a tough sell.
And if the other retail shops are meant to serve buyers from Ladner and Tsawwassen, what about the shops in those two villages who serve us? If TFN is successful, there'll be "For Lease" signs on your favourite shop's windows.
I'm generally a progrowth guy, but the takeit-or-leave-it stance of the TFN kind of... well... sucks.
They're paving good farmland. They're creating a traffic problem, if they're successful.
If they're successful, they will cause Ladner and Tsawwassen shops to close. If they're not successful, and all their optimistic marketing studies are worth nothing, then we've got a big white elephant at our door.
The TFN members are voting on this on Jan. 18. Of course it will pass. TFN members know there are big bucks in it for them if it's successful.
But the scary part is this development has a very real chance of creating a poisonous "us" vs. "them" atmosphere.
I hope it doesn't. But the seeds are set.
Robb Lucy
