Merchants vow to stop Aberdeen expansion

About 300 retail store owners and operators from five Asian-product shopping centres are so upset with their neighbor Aberdeen Centre's expansion plans that they've joined forces to stop it.
The retailers have recently formed an ad hoc group called Richmond Asian Merchants Committee, which includes store owners from Parker Place One and Two, Yaohan Centre, Dorfolk Place, and 53 tenants from Aberdeen Centre.
They've hired a lawyer, met with Mayor Greg Halsey-Brandt and a city planner, and vow to continue opposing Aberdeen's planned expansion. They're worried that a much larger Aberdeen Centre would lure even more cars to the traffic-jam-prone area, and that the mall's plan to build up to seven storeys won't fit in with the neighboring two-storey malls and single-family homes.
Many Aberdeen shop owners also maintain they will go broke because few customers will visit the mall during the lengthy three-year construction period. Most of the leases at Aberdeen are set to expire within three years, said Albert Leung, a director of Top Gun Chinese Seafood Restaurant at Aberdeen Centre.
"Just imagine: as a customer, are you willing to go to a restaurant with this, a construction site?" Leung asked during an interview Monday with six members spearheading the drive to block the proposal.
The extra cars heading to a much-bigger mall will cause traffic and parking chaos, said Bob Tai, owner of Oodles Technology Co. Ltd. in neighboring Parker Place mall.
"Traffic will be the number one concern. Traffic right now is bad enough."
Aberdeen currently has 480 parking stalls. The proposal calls for a four-storey parkade with 1,600 stalls. You don't solve a traffic problem by encouraging more cars, Tai said.
"If they are anticipating that kind of traffic, I don't see how that will solve the problem," he said.
"We are scared because if it goes ahead we are going to suffer," Tai added.
But Gene Cheng, marketing vice-president for Aberdeen's parent company, Fairchild Developments Ltd., denied construction will jeopardize existing businesses. Other malls, like Oakridge Centre and Richmond Centre, have expanded without their stores going broke, he said. Construction would also be phased in to minimize any disruption to stores.
"By phasing it in, the cost to us is much larger and we are only doing it for the tenants to maintain as normal a business as possible," he said Tuesday.
Fairchild is also conducting three separate traffic studies. Preliminary traffic designs show the vehicle flow will improve once Hazelbridge Way is re-aligned to meet up with Northgate Way, Cheng said.
"Our expansion is good for the whole area."
The most "vocal" opponents come from tenants in neighboring malls, he noted, who may be in a "conflict of interest."
The merchants were also upset to read comments made by Cheng in a recent issue of The Review, stating that the outcome of an Aug. 19 public meeting was "positive" and that only four people questioned the mall's proposal.
The RAMC members say they were not satisfied with the meeting and have yet to receive detailed plans on the proposal.