Canada Lands Announcement Soon

We keep hearing about the 2.4 acres across from Prospera Place that Canada Lands set aside for a hotel property. Although there has been rumour after rumour, this just may be it. It is said a developer is ready to put his $2.5 million on the table and the big date is July 26. I have some names and things but just let’s wait and see what happens this time.

If the first developer from Saskatoon had followed through on his promises the new Sheraton Hotel and Conference centre would now be open. They were also building one in Brandon.

This property has been through a couple of real estate promoters but they couldn’t seem to raise the needed cash. Now a 500 acres site in Lake Country has been purchased by a developer that has the moxie to make it all work. The company 2020 Properties of Vancouver, with a heavy Edmonton background I’m told, have completed a deal with Lakeside Properties for the site that has a small amount of lakeshore but views to die for.

A new Home Depot Store in Vernon is scheduled for the Anderson property. Where a new KAL store is also being built and the huge Real Canadian Super store.

Something is going on at the Conservatory site on Glenmore Road. It has been a mess up there for months although they continue to say it is a go. The financing is in place and the new contractor Vic Van Isle Construction of Revelstoke is the new guy in town. That company certainly has a good reputation in the trade. For awhile there, the name of Olsen Construction of Calgary was bandied about but that didn’t come to pass. Olsen is building the seventeen story Park Place on Baron Road. It would be good to see the project underway.

There is a new Pharmasave for Lake Country. Garth and Mona McKay are the owners of the 2600 square foot store. Garth has been a pharmacist for nine years. He just finished a stint in Seattle, before that he was at Save-On Foods Vernon.

When I last looked, our gasoline price was holding at 91.5. Prices have started to go up in the U.S. after a reprieve for a few weeks. The price of crude is up so guess what? We should be ready for some kind of action.

I get these notes all the time from readers who travel to Kamloops and see the prices there. This past weekend Safeway had gas at their store for sale for 78.9 plus 3.5 cents off at the pump. Safeway does this all the time and of course everyone in town has to follow. We still have less expensive gasoline from Armstrong down the valley than we have in Kelowna. It certainly isn’t because the operators are making big bucks. Their piece of the action is challenged all the time. The local operators work on such a small margin no matter what the price on the pump reads. They of course take all the flack from the customers.

I think we just have to get accustomed to these prices and get on with our lives because the world is dictating this change and there isn’t much we can do about it.

Didn’t you feel real good this past week when you knew you helped Alberta become debt free? Made me cry.

The weather is terrific as far as the tourists and the residents are concerned, although it could have been a little less warm on some of those days we have had since the end of April. But the weather hasn’t been good for the first of the cherry crop with some serious damage due to rain in the south valley. Rain as you know splits the fruit and it is unusable for the fresh market. Today’s shopper wants everything perfect and they are prepared to pay for that. I spoke with Richard King , the general manager of B.C. Fruit Packers by cell while he was having a look at the new soft fruit crop.

“The cherry crop is turning out to be as big as we predicted even though the weather has not been that cooperative over the last few weeks. There is some splitting and some quality problems. I think with this weather we’re expecting, and with some of the new varieties like Lapins now starting there will be a lot less splitting. Lamberts were the ones that were splitting with all that rain. The market is really interested in cherries and that’s a good thing. The quality of this latest pick is good.”

We just had some apricots fresh off the tree and they were excellent. How does this year’s crop look?
“The apricot deal is just getting underway, and again all these soft fruits just love this warm weather. Apricots are going to be a fairly large crop this year relative to other years. We expect about 35,000 twenty pound boxes. That is up ten thousand boxes. The way they are coming in we may even hit larger numbers than that. The quality of them is great. The sugar is high and they are clean this year. There isn’t a lot of marking from frost.”

I understand peaches are just starting as well?
“I just saw my first peaches today from this year’s crop and it is also estimated to be up, probably about twenty per cent over last year. Quality should be terrific. Also the pear crop is going to be about the same as last year and it is still about a month away.”

How does the apple crop look in the valley?
“Overall I think the apple drop will be up about fifteen maybe twenty per cent. The sizing is great and a very heavy crop.”

I keep hearing about picker problems, do we have any?
“I keep hearing about some from the south valley, but I’ll tell just watching the amount of fruit that is arriving at our plants there doesn’t seem to be a picker problem. There is more fruit coming off the trees than we have seen in the last couple of years so somebody is getting it off.”

What does the marketplace look like?
“The market seems to be quite strong on everything as long as the fruit is of good quality. What we are seeing is that there is almost no market for marginal fruit, and the good quality on cherries is a good example of how strong it really is out there. We are working very hard to meet the demand here. Demand is very evident for good quality fruit.”