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Regional: For the lack of a stamp!
Commentary by Jeff Burgar
for South Peace News
High Prairie continues its search for a big box store like Costco or Wal-Mart. This, despite a consultant’s prophecy last week the search won’t be successful.
There’s also still hope the No Frills grocery store, touted by the town office in a gaggle of radio ads for two years, will come through.
There’s good reason for the continued effort. A big box store helps make High Prairie a destination point. Supposedly, a Driftpile or Joussard family off to Slave Lake’s Wally World in search of reasonable priced diapers will shop local if they can find the same in High Prairie. While Mom does the shopping, adding a few hundred dollars of groceries to the diaper tab, Dad stops in the local hardware store and picks up a tool or two. The youngsters take in the swimming pool. After a few hours, everybody joins up at a local restaurant and chows down. Total money lost by the community over saving $60? Between $250 and $500 or more.
Start adding electronics, furniture and vehicles to this and you get the idea this is serious money. It’s also important to note, this amount can be measured. More on this leakage later.
Master entrepreneur Frank Lovsin had this message when he told Peace River businesses they should welcome Wal-Mart to that community. Lovsin wasn’t shy when he said Wal-Mart would slow retail leakage to Grande Prairie. Best of all, he added, it would also suck in shoppers from communities like Falher, McLennan, Manning and High Prairie.
It was just another example of former High Prairie mayor George Keay’s “black hole” theory. Keay was fond of saying years ago, “Grande Prairie is just a giant black hole, sucking in everything from the Peace Country.”
Well, guess what? Now there are three “black holes” in the area: Grande Prairie, Peace River and Slave Lake.
So, in High Prairie’s case, as the fourth biggest town in the area, and the town with actually the third largest trading area, it’s a no-brainer decision to fight fire with fire.
But, before you get excited, consider the movers and shakers behind this, the High Prairie economic development committee. They appear to have trouble writing a letter. One member, Barry Sharkawi, says he is on his fourth month of wanting a letter on town stationery inviting Costco to High Prairie.
Actually, the chances of Wal-Mart locating in good old High Prairie are far better, and probably just a matter of time, but that’s beside the point. If you can’t even write one letter, a retail leakage study is out of the question. It’s unfortunate too. Such a study would give people great ammunition when out hunting for those big box stores.
Perhaps town councillors could pony up some of the $150,000 or so in their annual meeting fee claims to pay for the study.
And perhaps, just perhaps, they could spring for a piece of paper and a stamp, too.
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