Imagine, for a second, being a business owner in the middle of a historic heat wave and the air conditioning in your building goes out. Temperatures are reaching upwards of 40 degrees inside your shop, employees are getting sick from the heat, clients are walking out because of the unbearable temperatures, your portable A/C units aren’t able to handle the job in front of them and there is no help coming for weeks if not months.
That is exactly what is happening for many businesses inside of the Market Pavilion building in Whistler’s Marketplace.
In May, Jeremy Poyntz, owner of Be Beauty Laser & Esthetics, was forwarded an email from his landlord, written by Whistler Resort Management (WRM), the strata management service that looks after the building, stating that the air conditioning unit broke down and wouldn’t be fixed for 10 weeks.
“So, I called WRM last week just to sort of get an update and now they're telling me the cooling tower won't be mailed back out until I think August 20 or something like that, which means it probably won't be there and installed until early September at that point,” said Poyntz.
“We can't keep our unit under 30 degrees, and my staff are ready to walk out and I’m really worried.”
It even went so far as one of Poyntz’s employees vomiting because of the heat in the building, he said.
And it's the same story for many businesses in Market Pavilion. Hunter Gather had temporarily closed because of the heat, FYI Doctors has been closing at noon because the afternoons are too hot to continue operation and an employee at The Loft Salon had to be sent home due to heat-induced nausea, Pique was told.
“We already lost a bunch of clients who come in and are like ‘it’s way too hot in here, we're not going to sit for an hour and a half pedicure,’ so they just walked out,” said Poyntz. “We've had the girls complaining that they put wax on people and then can't get it off, they're just all at their end.”
When asked about any temporary solutions business owners will see until the cooling tower is repaired, WRM director Beau Craig said “the businesses are entitled to, if they want to, put fans in their units or to do whatever they want to do” to help minimize the effects of the heat in their space.
But according to Poyntz, this has created other issues like portable AC units being vented into the building’s common areas, raising the temperatures throughout the building even more—something he believes WRM should be putting a stop to.
“I think they should have come on site and made sure that people aren’t venting their AC into the common areas, which just creates all the heat staying in the building. So, their space might be cool, but it is increasing the temperature drastically in the building,” said Poyntz, whose frustrations are reaching a boiling point.
“[WRM's] response [is] to just send an email. They have not been in the building, they have not seen people venting their AC into the common areas or just up into the drop ceiling, the long-term effects of which I'm a little worried about, but it's pretty uninhabitable in there right now.”
While WRM manages the building, it is the strata council that makes all the decisions, including about repairs. In an emailed statement to Pique, the strata council said that the tenants of the building were notified of the cooling tower break down as soon as it was confirmed in April, and an order for a new one was put in immediately.
“The strata corporation has gone above and beyond to address the failure of the cooling tower by meeting quickly, approving an extremely large piece of equipment, and arranging for repairs as soon as the equipment arrives,” read the statement.
“The strata corporation is not responsible for providing temporary air conditioning to all commercial units while the new cooling tower is on order. The Council is, however, sympathetic to the businesses in the building that are dealing with the current heat wave with the hottest temperatures in Canadian history."
The email went on to say that if businesses are unable to operate they can make the decision to close their doors and contact their own insurance company about potential compensation.
However, for Poyntz and some of the other business owners in Market Pavilion, the most frustrating part of all of this is not knowing the timeline of when they will have air conditioning in their space again.
“That's what they are saying, that it's a delay not on their end, but it's more just their lack of trying to deal with this problem or what caused the problem and their unwillingness to tell us anything,” said Poyntz. “All we got was that email saying it was going to be 10 weeks, and that 10 weeks should be coming up pretty soon and now we are being told it's another six weeks or eight weeks or whatever it's going to be.”
