Let’s get our priorities straight on Walmart site
Editor:
Re: The proposed Walmart at Garden City and Alexandra.
I am a Richmond resident living one block from this site. My two young sons and I regularly go for walks and bike rides around the neighborhood with our dog. We enjoy looking for tadpoles, frogs, and stickleback fish in the ditches along Alexandra Road. We regularly spot great blue herons and other hunting birds looking in those same ditches. We sometimes glimpse muskrats running back into their underground homes. There are squirrels everywhere. The trees are beautiful and fully mature. Coyotes den close by to have their puppies in the spring. This area is truly an oasis.
If the vision for the Garden City Lands across Alderbridge can be realized, and the lands are turned into a world class park with an orchard, a community garden, a restored peat bog, a learning centre, and a raised walkway, then to allow this Walmart proposal to go through would be true folly. Short sighted, ugly, profit mindedness, and nothing less. Future generations of Richmonders will shake their heads with wonder at what could have been. Let us not go down that familiar road yet again.
When one single lot was cleared of trees adjacent to the elementary school by No. 4 Road and Odlin Road recently, the noise level increased amazingly.
I can not imagine what would happen if this whole strip of land were to be cleared of trees. I can imagine what would happen if another Walmart goes in. Increased traffic, increased noise, urban sprawl, loss of community, less safety for cyclists and pedestrians, no more frogs or muskrats, no more walks in the urban woods with my sons.
Just say no to Walmart. You can always get in your car and go to Surrey if you want to buy their cheap junk. There are Walmarts all over North America. There is only one beautiful urban forest on Alexandra Road. Let’s get our priorities straight before the excavators begin to rip out the trees. Go take a look at Mt. Baker on a crisp sunny morning, take a deep breath, and do the right thing. Say no to Walmart on Alexandra Road!
Caleb Sigurgeirson
Richmond
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