Hansbraun Investments would like to address the issues surrounding the classic car gathering at Royal Oak Shopping Centre on Saturday, July 20, 2013. We are in complete support of any type of community-building activity and recognize the gathering of classic cars as a positive for the community in general.
Hansbraun Investments regularly receives complaints, from tenants and customers, about the safety issues, lack of parking and at times rude treatment by Coffee Cruisin’ car show participants. During the gatherings there are many pedestrians, often including children, strolling in the drive aisles to look at the cars, which is a major safety concern. On some occasions we’ve had participants begin “smoke shows”, refuse to yield handicapped parking spaces to handicapped customers and block access to sidewalks. Some tenants have reported lost revenue and others have chosen to close their stores on Saturday evenings because the gathering disrupts their business. These problems have been going on for years and any effort at communicating with the group has been met with aggression, vitriol and abuse, which we find surprising and suspect this does not fairly represent this group.
We would like to remind classic car owners that these gatherings are being held on private property without anyone ever requesting permission. Moreover, our liability insurance does not cover such events. Any group gathering must have liability insurance in all shopping malls, not only ours. Our insurance company does not differentiate between “informal” and “formal” gatherings—all of them must have insurance. While many argue these events are just an informal get-together, they are often announced as “events” on several classic car websites and are recognized as such in most of the angry feedback we’ve received.
Hansbraun Investments confirms having requested Robbins to issue tickets to participants in the ‘Coffee Cruisin’ classic car gathering on its property, the Royal Oak Shopping Centre, on Saturday July 20th. Eight tickets were issued in total. The intent was not to discriminate against classic car owners and enthusiasts, but rather to address the ongoing problems associated with an unauthorized and uninsured event taking place on our property. We have been trying to get this message out for years and in recent months distributed notices at the event in hopes that a representative from the group would step forward and communicate with us. We are still hopeful that will happen.
We would challenge those who are passionate about this issue to put down the hate mail and have a constructive conversation with us about how we can turn this negative situation into a positive for the community, participants, businesses and customers of Royal Oak Shopping Centre.
For more information, please contact our office by phone at 250-727-6333 or email at info@hansbraun.com.