An interesting event occurred recently here in BC that has a lot of people screaming racism and discrimination. Around the east Surrey area, near Langley, is a mini mall/plaza called the West Willow Plaza. The mall has recently been sold to a new Korean owner who, from what I have read, intends to make the mall consist of only Asian/Korean themed shops and businesses. The biggest new business to open up within that area would be a business called “H-Martâ€, which is Korean supermarket. As a result, all of the non Asian tenants have been asked to leave once their lease expires and there is apparently no option for them to renew.
Obviously, some of the tenants aren’t very happy as some of them have been there for over 20 years. When I read this news personally, due the circumstance I don’t really see this as a race issue but possibly a bad business decision. The reason I say this is because when it comes to leasing space, realistically the owner has a right to say who can and can’t do business on their property and if the new business direction was to develop an Asian themed mall, I can’t really condemn them for doing so. Otherwise, I may as well say any other ethnic or theme specific malls in BC are violating some sort of human rights law.
I do think it is a bad business decision though due to the way the news broke out without much of an explanation from the new owners. So far, it seems to of cause a lot of controversy and possible boycotts to that business area. For the most part, I have always felt that BC is a very multicultural and diverse place to live in, so I hope this won’t create some kind of unnecessary riot.