By Dominic Abassi

City of Nanaimo vows to bring back cheap tree offering after quick sell out

Apr 24, 2017 | 5:47 PM

NANAIMO — The City of Nanaimo is promising a promotion offering cheap trees will return after a massive response to the pilot project on the weekend.

It took barely 30 minutes on Sunday, April 23 for the City to sell out of the 200 vouchers they were offering for just $10. The vouchers can be redeemed at a local garden centre for a two-year-old fruit or coniferous tree worth up to $75.

The sale began at 11 a.m. and the lineup in Bowen Park stretched from the main building nearly to the road within 15 minutes.

“It sort of reminded me of a Black Friday sale lineup,” urban forestry coordinator Patrick McIntosh said. “The interest exceeded our expectations which is a good thing but unfortunately couldn’t get to everybody there.”

As word spread of the vouchers being sold out, people took to social media to voice their displeasure with missing out on the deal. “Only 200 vouchers people. Not notified in this post. Bad form, City of Nanaimo,” said one of the more than 160 comments on the City’s Facebook post about the event.

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By Monday afternoon, McIntosh said he was still dealing with some of the fallout. He estimated at least 200 were turned away empty-handed. “The post went viral I guess and there was more interest than we had anticipated…I feel bad that people were inconvenienced but we really do hope to do this again, we’ve learned from our mistakes on this pilot project.”

McIntosh said they would like to make the offer available again soon and it will be a budget-based event moving forward.

“We know certainly making more vouchers available would be beneficial and probably limiting to two trees per address, instead of three per person. We have a few ideas that I think could make the event go more smoothly and make sure everybody in a line-up the size we saw gets their tree,” he said.

McIntosh noted the idea behind the initiative was to boost the number of trees on private land, lending to the overall goal of increasing the urban forest canopy in Nanaimo. He said revenues generated from tree removal fines and permits provided the funding.

He added people in general were very excited about the offering and really appreciated the benefit additional trees bring to the community.

dominic.abassi@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @domabassi