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Originally Posted by WarrenC12
If you'd ever been to the Grandview Costco you'd know the parking lot was a joke, it was very cramped, many fender benders just waiting to happen. My girlfriend and I drive a 4 cyl compact car, and even so we were thrilled to see the dimensions of the new parking lot. The reality is that Costco shoppers tend to come in large vehicles. You can argue that this is not environmentally friendly, but Costco using a little more land for parking is hardly an environmental disaster.
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If the lot was a little larger than normal, I wouldn't have noticed. The fact is, this is the lowest density parking lot I've ever seen - it's an enormous waste of land where there could have been trees, more development, or something else useful. And the old Costco's lot isn't really that cramped at all - maybe just slightly tighter than average. The Superstore down the street is definitely tighter than that Costco.
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2. Costco as a business model appeals to the SUV driving, McMansion living, suburbanite crowd. As a group these are among the worst resource wasters and polluters in the world. Is that Costco's fault? We're still living in a free market. Exercise your opinion with your wallet (and by all means, tell all your friends).
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No, it's not Costco's fault that Vancouver developed this way - they're just doing their best to perpetuate that pattern of development, and they're entitled to do that (regrettably, in my opinion). My main beef is that Costco is not doing as they're saying, which, again, was, "
the company has always tried to minimize its impact on the environment".
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Also remember that the new Costco is in an industrial area. Chances are Burnaby would not have allowed them to build in a "core area". i.e. Burnaby is moving all of the auto dealerships off of Lougheed Highway down to the Still Creek area (near Costco) to make way for transit-oriented development @ Brentwood.
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Industrial land that should have been retained for actual industrial purposes, perhaps. And, I'm quite certain that Burnaby would have allowed them to build in a core area. First, there's the regional precedent of the Downtown Costco. Second, Burnaby already has big boxes of its own in high density mixed-use developments - the Save Ons in Madison Centre and Edmonds, and the Future Shop and Best Buy at Metrotown.
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Likewise - you should be complaining about the new Keg Restaurant that just opened up down there - there's absolutely no need for it to be surrounded by a huge parking lot!
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I wouldn't have said anything if Costco didn't say they were green. If I read about the Keg gloating about how their new location was green, then I wouldn't agree with them, though I don't think their abuses are on the same scale as Costco's.
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