'abomination'

so the reviews are coming in for smartcentres' proposed alcan development and so far they ain't good.

a public hearing last night railed against the proposal to plop a new sprawlmart and crappy tire tucked in behind the wendy's and shoppers. it's a big project and one hot on the heels of the king's crossing development that's been taking over the north end. the combined heft of just the one alcan development would, in theory, equal the whole of downtown kingston's retail space.

gah.

what is more, the alcan project would sidetrack another plan underway to bring a 'high-tech business park' to the area from queen's. i'm not sure if there would be overlap as i had heard earlier that queen's was earmarking the eastern flank of the site near the apartments at the beginning of concession. there was a kerfluffle about the potential for this development to uproot the baseball diamonds and fields there...

i'll post some pics of the site in a bit - for now here are the links to smartcentres (click on 'our centres' on the right, select ontario and kingston), the whig story and kings crossing for a recap of the 401 plaza-ish thing that throws a monkey wrench into these new proposals.

howard sloan, a proponent of the plan, said that having a home-improvement store so close to the downtown would "cut my fuel and travel time in half". as the rona on princess is located just about 3.5 km from the alcan site this would mean that howard lives around division and princess... man, just think... he could save 8 minutes off his commute!

update: colorado me

well... it's been seconds since i posted about my echo me in colorado. well... it appears that this story might have legs... not that he's emailed me back but this site does elaborate on the type of person he is...

bible quiz champion, 2004 (he won the silver in 2003)

president's leadership class

intersting...

on a side note... while googling i found that there was an apparent dave dorey affair involving football. i shall investigate.

confused in colorado

ok so i don't have the most popular of names. it's a bit odd... off the beaten track. all told there are probably only enough doreys to fill a clown car (one on the larger side, yes...), and then you tack my first name onto the front and that's gotta narrow the field by a factor of at least 10. so... recently someone with my very same name has gotten it into his head that he's sending emails to himself, only he's addressing them to someone named paul. so this is even weirder cause paul was my father's name.

here's the first email exchange - his number has been omitted...

Dear Paul,
I wanted to let you know that I have dropped our security deposit in the
mail today, and it should arrive shortly.

I will contact you again as Aug. 1 approaches to setup a day for move-in and
check-in.

Thanks,
Dave

i politely responded that he must be confuzzled for the following reasons: i'm not paul, i have the same name as he does, and he adds a dot in the middle of my email address (which google doesn't recognize - they say so right here).

i responded with the following...

Hi there,

Unfortunately you've got the wrong email (while mine doesn't have a
dot in the address it still made it to my inbox) - while we share a
great name I don't live anywhere near Colorado and do not know Paul.

All the best and hope you get it figured out,

Dave.

i thought this would have settled it right there... but no, i was wrong. today i get the second message...

Dear Paul,
Thanks again for your call the other day regarding putting in wood floors
upstairs.

I was wondering, since there will already be construction going on in the
house at this point, if it would be too much trouble to ask to have a door
put on the third bedroom upstairs where I will be staying?

I noticed that this last year the screen had broken on the guy who was
staying in the room, so I thought it might be a useful change to safeguard
against future breaks.

Just thought I'd ask.

Thanks,

Dave Dorey

so... i responded with the short, but i consider witty, rejoinder...

I'm not Paul so while your request sounds reasonable I cannot fulfill it.

once again... you've got a great name but i think you're confused about where you're sending emails.

dave.

i'll keep you posted on where this goes...

kingston - home of the big box store

article in the whig today about the possibility for yet another big box development in k-town. this one would be plopped at the corner of sir john a. and princess, just behind the paint and pet food place and would include a new crappy tire and walmart. and... the new stores would dwarf the old ones. yep, they are planning larger versions of the already massive sites.

while the cdn tire would be bigger, by 1,800 square metres, than the current record holder out on gardener's road (the new one would be 110,000 square feet for imperial comparison). by the time it's completed, though, one in halifax will have been built at a mind-numbing 14,000 square metres (the gardener's one is a relatively puny 8,400). that's a hell of a lot of wd-40, second-rate electronics and discounted camping gear.

however, both of these stores would have sand kicked in their faces by the 20,000 square metre behemoth that is the new walmart (215,000 square feet), some 7,500 square metres bigger than the current one in the township.

apparently there is demand for these guys - along with a new department store and hardware store (the first lowes perhaps???). i was hoping for an ikea. to figure out the walmart demand they actually counted licence plates and did a geographical analysis of where people were coming from. yep, if you went to walmart over the past few months and had not stolen a car to get there, they most likely know.

i have no idea what this will do to the kings crossing development taking shape over on division at the 401. already they've begun the clear cut and assessment of the groups in prep of constructing that big box heaven. wild stuff. and we can start the betting on what the old cdn tire will become once the new one is up and running. i've voting for waterpark.