A courier company has been ordered to stop operating out of a parking lot in Nanaimo’s Beban Park now that regular activities are expected to resume there.
Corporate Couriers Logistics was formally notified Aug. 3 that it will have to cease operations in the park by Sept. 7, Art Groot, the city parks department’s director of facilities and maintenance, said Monday.
Groot said that staff noticed in January that the company was sorting boxes in the parking lot next to the Merle Logan field in the park. At the time, park activities were closed with no bookings or formal access because of the pandemic.
There was little to no impact on the public from the company, he said. But restrictions have been gradually lifting and are expected to be fully gone by Sept. 7.
Regular use is anticipated to resume shortly in the park.
Online sales have increased dramatically during the pandemic meaning that couriers in Nanaimo and other communities have been extra busy.
In this case, vans would park back-to-back for one to two hours in the mornings and packages would be sorted, Groot said.
A company spokesman could not be reached Monday.
The company’s website said the Burnaby firm has been in business for three decades in major areas of B.C. It has a fleet of more than 800 drivers and bicycle couriers.
Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog said issuing a notice to leave was “certainly the right call by Mr. Groot on behalf of the city. We are not going to provide subsidies to individual companies by allowing some to use our parking lots etc.”
Kim Smythe, chief executive and president of the Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce, said he was baffled that the courier company used the park.
“Everybody has to spend money to rent space with which they operate their business,” he said.
“I don’t see the fairness in this company being able to use public property when everybody else pays to rent private property to operate.”
