So all those rumours were true

I've been out of the bloggosphere for about a week or so due to personal commitments including the loss of a family member, so my apologies for the lack of activity. I'm still busy with the usual pre-Christmas mayhem, but I'll post something just to let people know that the blog is still an on-going enterprise.

Hmmm. So many things to post on ... how about IKEA? Waddayaknow, they are coming after all:

IKEA said it will built a 350,000-square-foot store, becoming an anchor tenant in a 1.5 million retail development on the southwest Winnipeg site.
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The deal is contingent on receiving planning approvals from the province and the City of Winnipeg. -fp-

"contingent on receiving approvals from the province and the city" = done deal. Can you imagine either Sam Katz or Gary Doer getting in the way of this? Both those guys are so excited about the prospect of an Ikea ground-breaking ceremony that they peed on the carpet when they heard about it. If this city caves in to developers of Home Depots and stucco houses, you can bet that they'll roll over for Ikea, even if it doesn't make any sense.

"I'm thrilled to see this major retail project transform from talk to action," said Katz. "The city has worked diligently to create an 'open for business' environment," he said. "By accelerating existing infrastructure plans we are encouraging smart, responsible development." -cbc-

Whatever, Sammy. How many traffic lights are you going to put up for this store anyhow? Is there going to be yet-another surface level intersection on Kenaston, or another set of traffic lights on the already-misnamed Sterling Lyon Parkway? Or better yet, at-grade intersections on both streets, just to make Ikea happy?

Does somebody have a link to this "existing infrastructure plan"? Does it really call for a widing of Sterling Lyon? 'Cause that street is only, like two years old or something. Are you telling us that you built it below spec right off the bat? When is this city going to learn to build things properly the first time instead of cheaping out only to force more expensive upgrades in the future? The Kenaston underpass is another example. Why the hell would they build it to accomodate only four lanes of traffic when they knew that Waverly West was coming and you had existing plans to widen the road?

It's not that I don't want Ikea to come. After all I'm sitting at an Ikea desk, under a set of Ikea cabinets, next to Ikea bookshelves and an Ikea garbage can, wearing Ikea underwear and sipping Ikea egg nog. Let's just do this right, hey? I'm actually kind of glad it not going to polo park like I guessed here. The traffic around PP is hideous. However the traffic on Kenaston is not great either thanks to short-sighted development, and could get worse if Sammy doesn't behave himself.