Surrey

Bookends

Driving around town this afternoon, I was struck by how much potential Surrey’s City Center (aka Whalley) has. The City has been trying to redevelop this area since Skytrain was extended through to Fraser Highway, back in the early 1990’s. A lot of the old crack houses homes in the area have been demolished, and development signs are sprouting up on several empty properties in the area.

It’s coming along, but slowly. Right now we have bookends. That is, we have new, and nearly new developments at either end of City Center.

The Central City Mall and new the SFU campus tower are at the south end (no, it’s not tilted, I was ;-):

Central_city_tower

The Infinity condo project is also underway across from Central City. It’s supposed to hold a couple of thousand people when it’s done, and the first phase sold out in a day:

Infinity_project_in_whalley_060802

And we have Scotia Tower and Gateway settlement at the north end:

Gateway_towers_in_whalley

There are residential complexes close to Gateway as well. But if you look closely at part of the middle of the area near Central City (as seen via the City’s Cosmos utility), you’ll notice a lot of parking open space.

City_center_via_cosmos

Actually, the middle of City Center is much like an open canvas right now, and we can make it into whatever we want to. That’s kind of exciting actually, and hopefully the City will take advantage of that potential to attract some community minded business folks. With about 70,000 people in the area now, and several thousand more moving into new condos over the next couple of years, there’s got to be a customer base for enterprising folks.

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Kentucky Chicken just lost a customer

I admit it. I’ve got a weakness for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Calories, cholesterol, and unknown secret ingredients included. Whatever.

But tonight I’m no longer a customer, and I’ll tell you why.

For the last couple of years “4 pieces of chicken, original, with fries, to go” has been a regular order for me. While I often had to repeat at least part of my order, and then turn down salad, desert, and extra chicken, it seemed to work very well. I’d go in once every couple of weeks or so and enjoy two pieces and fries for one night’s dinner, a piece each for the next two nights with salad.

For a long time the price was about $6.94, and that was acceptable to me. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed it had gone up to about 7.50. I thought for a minute, but paid it. After all, prices go up with wages and taxes, etc. Fine.

Well, tonight I went in and made my order. It came to $8.40. Huh? I mentioned the price increase, and the young lady at the till turned around to another young lady in the kitchen who dutifully explained that they were now restricted to selling ‘packages’ of items, and couldn’t sell them separately. That meant that I could pay for four pieces of chicken, a salad (that I didn’t want), fries, and a pop (which I didn’t want), or walk.

I walked.

Sorry Colonel Saunders. Don’t try to supersize me. I can get a whole barbequed chicken at Safeway for less than $9.00. That would last me most of the week.

You’d think that these days, with all the individualized and mashed up services being offered, companies would have learned that their customers are sick of the on-size-fits-all approach to their products. But I guess not.

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Northern Voice to unfortunate silence

The Northern Voice conference in Vancouver last weekend was the first blogging conference I’ve been to. What an interesting collection of topics and speakers – everything from extreme geek, to storytelling and community building. I left excited, and with full intensions of creating a blog post fury. I may still, but…

When I got home, I got a phone call from a friend in Search and Rescue – Surrey Search and Rescue, that is. He asked if I had some time to come and participate in a search.

I hummed and hawed a bit, but had a bite to eat and went down to the search base at the Tsawassen ferry terminal. Searchers scouered through the mud and darkness until about 02:00 or so for a fellow that had gone missing a few days earlier. They had found some of his belongings along the causeway, but there’s been no sign of him. If you can help, please give the Delta Police a call.

Tags: Northern Voice, Surrey.

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Outdoor concerts coming to Surrey via Central City Brewing

Central City Brewing Co. (More info here.) is hosting some outdoor concerts this summer. Tickets at Central City or Ticketmaster ($35 – $38.50). Also posted in the Surrey Leader newspaper

June 24: Everclear, Carnival Divine, and Surrey guitar sensation Danny Sveinson.
June 25: Gin Blossoms with Holly McNarland and other special guests in a show hosted by Mr. Lahey and Randy from the Showcase television series Trailer Park Boys
July 29: MerQury, The Almost Hip.
July 30: Kim Mitchell and David Wilcox
Aug. 26: a secret until June 24.
Aug. 27: The Machine

Good stuff. Even if I don’t know anything about the bands, it’s refreshing to see some of this happening in the old home town.

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Sometimes it’s just good to get out

Attended a Surrey Chamber of Commerce lunch yesterday at the Surrey Golf Club. Anthony Martin, President and Chief Operating Officer of Great Canadian Casinos gave a talk about their recently aquired Fraser Downs site in Cloverdale. He’s a pretty good speaker and has a humorous story about how he came to work with the company – if you get a chance, ask him about it ( sorry, no link on that). Suffice it to say, it was one of those “out of the blue” episodes. And it gave a bit of a picture of him as a person – nice.

Seems the Company has grown from about 1800 employees in 2003, to 5100 in 2005, and attained a TSX return of 14,814% (yikes!). I don’t gamble, but I wish I had back in ’03. Local properties now include those in Richmond, Coquitlam, Vancouver, and Surrey. They’re still looking forward….so stay tuned.

Tidbit: Surrey Central is not the center of Surrey – Cloverdale is.

I enjoy Chamber lunches. In my past life, most of my business contacts were spread around the province. That was great and I really enjoyed it, but now I’m getting a chance to meet some local folks. Yesterday I lunched with people in banking, advertising, web-design, and car insurance loss prevention. I also talked with local politicians, a realestate person and a newspaper publisher. Cool. I like learning about what other people do.

Arbor Day at Green Timbers

I took a brief trip over to the arbor day event at Green Timbers Park today. There weren’t many people there, but those that attended seemed enthused. Lots of local environmental orgs with displays and, of course, the Lions with hotdogs by donation – Yes!

I took a break to sit by the lake in the middle of the park. Lots of ducks, one goose and an eagle sitting in a tree. I watched the eagle for a while and it finally made it’s move – it swooped down on the surface of the lake a couple of times and scurried away with a fish.