Here are a few more rumours making the rounds.
A&W is looking at the empty lot beside Rupert Cleaners.
Wal Mart is building a 1 sq mile loading/unloading facility on Ridley Island.
Victor Kumar is quitting as City Administrator.
Canadian Tire and Wal Mart are building a strip mall at BC Hydro with both of their stores in it. Apparently surveying has happened because there are stakes marking something along the highway by BC Hydro.
This is the only one of the 4 you listed that I can confirm and have heard from some pretty reliable sources. I heard that Can. Tire and Wal-Mart were going there along with some kind of chain restaurant. The only thing that was unclear was whether or not the Wal-Mart was going to be an actual store or just a distribution center. Kind of like the Sears is here, but on a bigger scale of course.
We don’t need a Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire! We need something different that will BRING business into town from the surrounding places that don’t have these stores yet. Screw having the same stores and amenities the next town over has, we need something different!
My votes are for Future Shop and Sport-Chek!
I’d like to see a Costco. Alot of people travelling by boat could load up here. Not to mention drawing a few people from Terrace. Instead of us doing our business there maybe we could get a few of them down here shopping. I really think we need a restaurant chain to move in too. Boston Pizza seems to be making a move in the north opening in Terrace and Smithers. Red Robin would be nice. I’ve got a hunch though that a Denny’s will pop up here sometime.
I did hear too that the land beside the hydro building has been sold to canadain tire but also the land out there is being divided into residential property for future housing projects.
There is also a new subdivision being planned overlooking seacove at the end of 11th east. The land size is double the size of the silversides subdivision.
The city has a map designed that shows the layout plan for new residential areas. There was an area on it that shows additional streets on Crestview and behind Immanuel at the end of 11th. There is some room but with the potential for landslides I’d be surprised to see any houses ever go up on the mountain side of the highway.
Ya mate… me too whats up with dat…maybe there might be plans for the mountin. like taking the top off or something. let the clouds pass over rupert. and rain over Port Ed.
Astrothug wrote:
Thats the best idea Ive heard in a long time
Acutally a lot of that land out by Hydro is zone residential and has already been laid out for residential lots. Streets and lots have been laid out and the streets have been named.
Personally I dont see how a Walmart/CanTire will work here. It doenst make sense that either would locate a store here so close to another located only 90 miles away.
As well there have been streets and lots laid out behind India Ave, behind Seal Cove Circle, and the bottom part of Prince Rupert Blvd, where it goes down from the top of Fredrick st towards Rupert Towing…yes that really is PRB down there.
Until the container port is acutally in or damn near in operation and functioning I dont believe we will see any real development in that area.
Companies like Walmart/CanTire/Costco/ buy and sell properties all the time on speculation. They can afford to sit on it and wait till the time is right to develop it. I dont think any of those companies would develop a store/warehouse till the port is closer to a reality.
And as for the blowing the top of Mt. Hays…there was acutally a US Army Corp of Engineers report to do just that, but they wanted to build an airport.
costco would be cool too, because they are actually pretty fantastic employers to work for…quite frankly i wouldnt mind a walmart though, not to buy stuff at, but to go inside and cause shit, if anyone was in walmart in terrace on sunday, i was in no way responsible for the rain of pop-flyed balls flying randomly through the store. or for riding the tupperware containers down the aisles. or any of the other things that if they had employees who gave a shit probably wouldve been stoppped quickly.
word to big box retail havoc!
Costco would be awesome. So would Future Shop. It would be nice to have people travel here to shop again, just like it was back int the day.
I agree with the sentiment that Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire would be redundant. We aren’t large enough to support both, even when the port situation kicks into high gear. People from Terrace aren’t gonna come here to shop there, they got 'em already. It’s not like they are going to be cheaper here.
If I have a say, I would vote for Home Depot.
I hear a lot of “could be” and “would be” in here. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be missing out on economic reality. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the cold hard fact right now is that Rupert’s economy is in nowhere near good enough shape to support any of the businesses mentioned. All of these places are tertiary businesses that can only survive if you have a primary (resource-based) or secondary (manufacturing) industry to give people jobs. In other words, you have to have a business that actually makes something before you can support a big business that sells things.
Do you really think that a big company like WalMart or Canadian Tire is going to risk wasting money on buying and clearing land, and then building a giant store, only to find that the area doesn’t have a big enough source of disposable income to actually support it? These companies didn’t get to where they are by making stupid decisions. They’ll only build when they know the population has money to spend.
However much fun it may be to think “Yeah, we could have that too!”, the fact is that without a major employer in town to provide jobs for people actually making something, no big business is going to even consider such a move.
I think we need more sex stores.
Uncle Willy’s Hash-Pipes’N’Dildos
Or how about a “house of ill repute?” We can put it on Mt. Hays and call it the “Cheateau Libido”.
They did it in Smithers and Whitehorse. These stores tend to look at outlying areas as well and not just the actual population of the town that they are looking at. There are alot of villages, vessel traffic, industrial opportunities, the Charlottes, etc. They also tend to be pro-active rather than reactive so I’m sure that is why they are looking for property now rather than after it is all bought up and being developed not to mention more expensive after the port is running.
This is exactly right. Also it takes time to build one of these mega stores. Companies like these are always on the lookout for new untapped markets and emerging markets so that they can be the firsts one in. Right now Rupert is being seen as a bigtime emerging market.
Mike
Maybe so, but I’m not too sure that the populations of the outlying areas are enough to attract business. Not to mention that getting there is quite a different story. If you have a car, it’s easy to just hop in and go to a store, even if it’s an hour and a half drive away. Going by ferry or seaplane is a bit more of an ordeal, plus you have to find transportation when you reach your destination, which means either the bus (which is not conducive to carrying large amounts of stuff), or taxi, which is expensive if your whole goal is to save money.
Plus, most people who would go to these places won’t just go for one or two items–they’ll more than likely be stocking up, which means a lot of cargo to bring either on a seaplane or a boat. Unless they have a boat of their own that can make it to Rupert, I don’t see it happening.
[quote=“CrazyMike”]
This is exactly right. Also it takes time to build one of these mega stores. Companies like these are always on the lookout for new untapped markets and emerging markets so that they can be the firsts one in. Right now Rupert is being seen as a bigtime emerging market.
Mike[/quote]
The key word being “emerging.” Until that container port actually opens, or at least until significant progress has been made, it’s quite a risk.
I can see perhaps these companies buying the land ahead of time, but I seriously doubt they’ll actually do anything with it until we see more concrete progress on the container port.