Rumours and Things . . .

A well-known Kelowna developer/contractor is about to sign papers to take over the long planned Wharton Street project in Summerland. This is a downtown development and was for a time on the desk of a Kamloops developer who had some financial problems he couldn’t overcome.

This new try at this major addition to the downtown core will certainly be managed well and should be underway quickly.

I wonder if the library is still interested in moving to the site?

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I have written about these smaller stores that Walmart has built in some locations in the U.S., and now Canada is getting their first as the giant retailer builds a 50,000 sq ft store in Prince Rupert.

Construction to begin this fall.

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Sterling Shoes has entered into agreement with Town Shoes Ltd. to purchase the majority of assets and a substantial portion of the retail locations operating under the banners Sterling Shoes, Shoe Warehouse and Freedman for a purchase price of $17.5 million.

The company will close 53 stores in Alberta and B.C.  The company has been under bankruptcy protection since last October.

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It’s hard to believe that Fields Stores is sixty years old and 57 stores out of 141 have been sold to a Vancouver company. The Hudson Bay Co., who owned Fields said last year that by this fall they were going to close all the stores.
The Bargain Shop bought ten of them. They in turn closed their store in Kelowna last year.

Joe Segal started the chain in 1948 and at one point came close to having 200 Fields Stores across the West. Those were the days when Army & Navy was growing and the SAAN stores were selling merchandise from the Canadian forces.

The new owners are FHC Enterprises, a new company headed by Jason McDougall - originally from Saskatchewan. He has been in the discount business for years. They said after the Hudson Bay wraps up their business FHC will look at some of the other stores to add to the chain. 

We had Fields Stores in both Rutland and the Mission not that many years ago.

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I understand from a reliable source that the Costco people have been in South Okanagan taking a look at the property that is available for their size of footprint. Costco certainly does a great deal of business with the people from the South Okanagan and the Kootenays.

The store here has become a tourist attraction brining people to town to shop and staying over for the night.

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Hear rumours of some interest in the fruit-packing house in Summerland. That building is 160,000 sq. feet.

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Target Canada got permission last Friday from the Federal government to go ahead and replace every Zellers store in the country, but on the condition that the stores have more Canadian content.

What if they had said no in the capital?

Target Canada has already spent millions making the changes, and are getting ready for the fall when construction will start on many of the stores that should be open for business come May 2013.

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I have to tell you abut this if you’re looking for an electrician. I have been trying to get an electrician to my house for weeks. It’s like the boom years there when they were too busy to answer their phones. I had one who has done work for me before but they don’t even return calls.

Then I found Parker Electric.

Dwayne Parker is a busy man and so is his company, but he fit in the job I wanted done, got me into the schedule and it was all completed.
 
He sent one of his staff and it was done and completed in one morning. Very good to deal with.

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Former President of the U.S.A. Bill Clinton loves Canada and it’s one of the first places he made the big bucks on his speaking tours.  Eleven years ago when he hit the trail and the tickets were $150 he was doing well with his Canadian dates. He spoke at Prospera Place to a full house.

In those years since the presidency he has earned $89 million and in 2011 his take at the box office was $13 million. Canada alone was providing $2.5 million of the total.

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Walmart are famous for their Roll Back events and this one is no different. Ten thousand items rolled back and 3,000 of these goodies are in the grocery section. Now that is tough competition. The retailer is paying a lot of attention to their grocery section where the competition is fierce and more is coming from their arch rival, Target stores.

Walmart is also spending a huge dollar on expanding their present stores and building new ones.  Half of their Canadian stores totaling 177 are now Supercentres.  The remaining 156 stores are just regular big box stores.

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It all started in 1953: Tom Foord and his partner Jim Lockhead started Kal Tire in Vernon with one location. 

Since 1953, Kal Tire has expanded to 240 locations and with a partner from England to many international sites.  There are now over 4,000 employees. Their new headquarters building in Vernon holds a staff of three hundred. Tom Foord passed away last April.  He was 89 and just one month short of his 90th birthday.

BIV released their list of the Top 100 private companies in B.C. by revenue and Kal Tire always on the list was listed at 13.

This company wrote the book on how to service customers and they never let up.

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Tim Hortons is going to offer their customers free Wi-Fi service. At least 2000 of their stores will have high-speed wireless access across Canada. Their schedule calls for this to be completed by September.

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WestJet announced its selection by Aviation Week as a top 10 international airline. The study ranks airline carriers across the world by their annual revenues, using financial and operational data to rate publicly traded airlines in five different performance categories. WestJet is the only Canadian airline and one of only two North American airlines to appear on this year's list.

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Eight acres of waterfront property for sale at Trout Creek in Summerland.  A total of 317 feet of beach lake front bordering on Powell Park.

Floating docks, sandy shallow water beach tennis courts, softball field and spectacular views of the Naramata vineyards. Not in the ALR and Summerland has already indicated they are interested in development proposals. Colliers and Jane Hoffman have it listed.

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The Okanagan apple crop is looking very good with still a long way to go. The estimates are the crop be 20 to 25 per cent larger. The Okanagan grows 25 per cent of the Canadian apple crop.

This will add about five per cent to the national production.

Ontario is facing a real problem with a huge amount of the apple crop damaged by weather. Canadian growers are producing at least 50 per cent of the Canadian consumption of apples.

The damp weather hasn’t so far impacted the B.C. fruit.