No guarantee of customers for a TFN shopping mall
Suppose the Tsawwassen First Nation built a shopping mall and no one came, what then?
Cutting through the hype and hoopla of the proposed TFN mall, one question remains unanswered: Where are the masses of shoppers coming from to support the new TFN mall? Why would Richmond or Surrey shoppers come to the end of Delta to shop here?
The answer is, they would not.
More and more the proposed TFN mall looks like a Ponzi scheme, with the shopping mall being used as bait to force Delta taxpayers to fund tens of millions of dollars in local road improvements to ensure more and larger roads, not to service the shopping mall, but instead servicing housing developments on ALR lands. Already, farmlands are being assembled by developers hoping the provincial government will take the farmland out of the ALR.
The cost of the new roads for the supposed TFN shopping mall are a lure for Delta council to support new housing developments, to create a larger tax base to fund expensive road construction. What should be of great concern to Delta taxpayers is whether or not the TFN is going to fund road improvements in Delta. If the answer is no, then Delta council should not consider any extra road improvements at all and let the ensuing gridlock on choked roads starve the new shopping mall of its much-needed customers.
The lack of real transportation planning and the lack of real public consultation, certainly point to some sort of provincial flim-flam trying to get precious farmlands out of the ALR, and Delta council should not even consider playing the provincial game.
D. Malcolm Johnston, Delta
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