For RVers looking for a place to overnight in Kamloops, BC, the pickings have thinned out a bit. Signs are now posted at the Hillside Drive shopping giant prohibiting overnight RV parking. Don't blame the good folks at Walmart, point the finger at the shopping mall owners.SmartCentres, a corporation that owns many shopping mall properties, told a local news provider that the rule against overnighting has always been company policy, they've just decided it was time for a crackdown.
"More and more campers were coming and staying for longer periods of time, to the point where we were losing parking spaces that we have to provide to our tenants," ownership spokeswoman Sandra Kaiser told BC Local News. She said there had been complaints from shopping center tenants.
Walmart was not one of the complainers. In fact, the local Walmart manager suggested that RVers weren't really the problem at the shopping mall. Apparently the parking lot is a favorite of students who attend a nearby university. Regardless of who is at fault for the congestion, it's apparent that RVers won't be at issue--at least during the nighttime hours.
photo: bclocalnews.com
The title of the article is somewhat misleading. Walmart did not retract the welcome mat. As the article states the over night parking ban is the mall owners policy. Walmart usually owns the property their stores are built on. In this case they do not. I discovered this fact when I phoned the store last August to inquire about over night parking. The employee I spoke to advised me she couldn't authorize over night parking as Walmrt did not own the parking lot.
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