July 21, 2006

‘Green’ Wal-Mart store designed by famed architect

VANCOUVER

The world’s largest retail firm has revived its plans to build a Wal-Mart store in Vancouver after a late-night decision by city council to allow big-box stores on Southeast Marine Drive.

A Wal-Mart Canada representative says Vancouver architect Peter Busby’s design for a $30-million building with windmills, geothermal heating and other green features will be the foundation of a development proposal that will be submitted later this year.

Kevin Groh, the Ontario-based corporate affairs director of Wal-Mart Canada, suggested the Busby design would win the day.

Wal-Mart acquired enough land for a big-box store in 2002, spending about $20 million on an almost-five-hectare site on Marine between Main and Ontario, where a car dealer once sold new and old vehicles.

But the environmentally correct design that Wal-Mart unveiled in 2005 failed to appease critics, who predicted that a Wal-Mart store would be a magnet for more cars along car-congested Marine Drive and draw people away from neighborhood shops they could walk to.

CANADIAN PRESS

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