For those unaware, this HI54.BLOG operates from a mountain town apartment in Kimberley, BC (located just off of Highway 95a, hence all the MOUN.TOWN references and self-collaborations with a 95EH.CA site) — AND — currently our small town is seeing a proposal from a developer that wants to bring a McDonalds-GasStation-CarWash into some of our limited Industrial zone (which would require council to go against our Official Community Plan and change the zoning to retail at the developers request).

Thankfully, news of this has gotten more than just my ‘wait a minute…’ senses tingling, so here’s an ‘open letter’ from Diana at Mountain Grass Gallery + Bistro (follow them on Facebook and Instagram) in response to some of the 'Marysville McDonalds Messaging’ that was recently shared on the mayor’s Facebook page (and the mayor also did a follow-up FB post for anyone who likes extra context on how the official messaging of this proposal has been getting rolled out so far):

Hello,

I am writing this in response to the proposed McDonald’s /gas station development in Marysville.

As a resident, business owner, and commercial property owner in Kimberley, one of the things that made it such an attractive place to invest was that it appeared so friendly to small business. It was refreshing to see little competition from massive corporate chains, and instead a small business community that was focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity.

I fear if the Mayor and Council approve this development, everything that made it appealing for us to invest in this community will be eroded. While development is necessary and vital to the successful growth of a community, there are a number of aspects to this one that are problematic. I would like to specifically address the five points that Mayor Don McCormick identified as beneficial to this particular development, from his Facebook post of March 14, 2023.

According to Mayor McCormick:

“This is an important investment in the community that:

1. diversifies our tax base,

2. fills gaps in services for the community,

3. produces dozens of jobs (many for community youth),

4. generates in excess of $1.5M in new payroll to be spent in local shops and businesses and

5. keeps families needing family-priced food services from traveling to Cranbrook. ”

Points 1 and 2 are essentially the same, and both a misnomer at best. There are almost 40 restaurants in Kimberley, including drive-thrus, quick serve restaurants, and fast food chains. There are five gas stations, and two car washes - while it may add to the tax base, this does not present any real diversity. Additionally, this is essentially a development for more retail, as opposed to recreation, light industrial, or any other sector where Kimberley’s tax base is indeed lacking diversity.

“3 produces dozens of jobs (many for community youth)”. This communicates these are low wage, part time jobs that don’t provide benefits to their employees. It is worth noting that this too is potentially misleading, as McDonald’s is already piloting fully automated locations in the United States, so any jobs created run the risk of being short term. Considering the current cost of housing in our community and groceries across the country, dozens of low wage jobs for youth doesn’t seem like a huge benefit.

“4 generates in excess of 1.5m in new payroll to be spent in local shops and businesses.” This too is disingenuous. McDonald’s has no plan to increase payroll at the front line of their individual franchises. McDonald’s is very clear in their corporate plan on their website that their main areas of interest are increasing their digital and technological presence. These are not things that translate to long term jobs in small communities, so any payroll dollars that may be spent in the community are, like so many of the “benefits” identified in this, at best short lived., at least in the volumes that Mayor McCormick is speculating.

“5 keeps families needing family-priced food services from traveling to Cranbrook.” This is the “selling” point I find most troublesome. The implication of this statement is that the restaurants in Kimberley do not provide “family priced” food. The implication is that McDonald’s is the solution to the problem of high priced food caused by the restaurants in Kimberley. There are so many problems with this statement. Predominantly, McDonald’s controls virtually their entire supply chain; they have an enormous amount of oversight over every single aspect of their business. They own their own farms and manage their own distribution centres. This isn’t a secret, they identify supply chain management as a key to their success. Small restaurants do not have that kind of power (not to mention the luxury of hundreds of millions in advertising and 60+ years of branding) and we simply cannot compete. When food costs skyrocket, we have to make menu adjustments or pass on those costs to our customers. McDonald’s does not have to do that . Every restaurant owner here works really hard to keep their costs down and quality high, and we are doing so in what is starting to feel like an increasingly hostile environment. And now, instead of supporting the existing small business community by finding ways to help us after what I think it is fair to say has been a pretty tumultuous few years, Mayor McCormick is painting us as a problem that needs to be solved.

I think it is important to acknowledge that this communication from Mayor McCormick also disregards that every single restaurant owner in Kimberley is, in fact, an investor in this community. Every business owner is an investor in this community. Every property owner is an investor in this community. Indeed, at no point does this communication refer to all of us as the investors we are, but instead as “residents”, as though our investments are less than or don’t matter. It would be encouraging to know that the Mayor and Council cared about our existing investments in this community, and wanted to see us be successful as much as they cared about finding new investors. Instead, we are depicted as an obstacle, and treated as if we just don’t know what is good for us - this is insulting. We all have our individual reasons for choosing Kimberley as a place to invest, and we all pay a lot in property tax, and it would be comforting to know that these investments - our investments - are respected.

The final comment from Mayor McCormick that I think needs to be addressed is this: “Residents get to vote with their dollars - to support or not support a particular business.” I am sure every single person reading this letter knows more than one person who has not and will not go to McDonald’s, and I think everyone reading this can also say with confidence that those individual boycotts have had little to no effect on McDonald’s bottom line. There is no turning back once this is here, and no amount of ‘"residents choosing not to go there’" will offset the power of a multinational corporation with the influence their tens of billions of dollars brings. McDonald’s will be just fine - but the rest of us might not be.

Kimberley is not on a major highway, and it would be reassuring to see developments that would help to draw people and tourists here - a McDonald’s and a gas station will not do that. I take no issue with development and hope that future developments will serve to enhance and grow the community here - this one will not.

Sincerely,

Diana Fox

Owner Mountain Grass Gallery + Bistro

So, firstly… thanks Diana for sharing your 'open letter’! There are a lot of important points made that the typical “selling of a McDonald’s coming to town” tends to leave out by the people doing the selling (on a related note - CLICK HERE to read the 'open letter’ that Healthy Kimberley recently posted on their website in opposition too).

Secondly… for anyone else who has read all the way down to here, please feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments below or on your own local socials + if anyone else has an 'open letter’ brewing inside of them that they might like aired ‘FROM THE MAILBAG’ on 95EH.CA, whether on this same topic or about something else of local area concern/interest, just shoot an email to ‘hey@95eh.ca’ and a human will get back to you with a “eh!” and/or “eh?”, okay?

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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI

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