By David F. Rooney
Steven Cross, co-proprietor of Revy Outdoors, is concerned about the proposal to build a strip mall, usually defined as a shopping mall consisting of stores and restaurants typically in one-storey buildings located on a busy main road, up at the intersection of the Trans-Canada Highway with Highway 23 North.
Like many of the city’s retail businesses, Revy Outdoors remains swaddled in brown paper, symbolizing their potential death if the proposed mall goes ahead.
Steven and his wife Carolyn Gibson have small-town Ontario upbringings (Steven tis originally from Stittsville “just beyond the fringe” of Ottawa while Carolyn is from Acton. Their small-town origins eased their transition to Revelstoke from Toronto. They have extensive backgrounds in retail and they are also advisors in the Queens University MBA program, of which they are both graduates.
They also have memories of what happened in their hometowns when highway malls appeared on the periphery of those communities.
Please activate the audio player below to hear my conversation with Steven regarding Revelstoke’s own fresh, new encounter with a highway mall: