October 25, 2018

Chair:        Gerd Wengler

Anthem:    Mike Mushet    

Grace:        Arthur Retnakaran

 

Attendance:     13 including guests Lillian Collangelo, Nadia Heyd, Robert Horst guest speaker.

 

1. Attention all members: Thursday November 1st an induction of 3 new members will take place. All members are urged to come to meet and encourage these new Rotarians:
Anthony Lippa
Avrum Liederman
Courtney Fisher

2. Gerd started off by reporting on some challenging “engineering” issues in the basement garage of one of their rental buildings.  The “experts” seemed to be confused about rebar, solid support columns and how to replace parts of the ceiling in the garage.
Basil offered his services as a certified engineer and basement renovator if Gerd every needed one again.

 

3.Frank Allison, just back from his and Bette’s overseas trip reminded us that Steve Zelinski hopes to be able to attend our Remembrance Day meeting November 8th. Steve is the last member of our club’s veterans of WWII. Steve will celebrate his 100th birthday on December 16th.He still lives in his own home on Woodthorpe Road in North York but his daughter keeps close watch on him.

 

Nadia was asked to pull the winning ticket today.  It was Jim Boyko’s and he said the $5.00 consolation prize that he was awarded was more valuable than the pot. (David Seemungal drew the winning ticket and the mutant marble last week and hasn’t been seen since!)

 

Barry Smith started off by fining any members who were not otherwise involved in the meeting duties,  who had not offered to volunteer to be today’s scribe. That was a put to the group as one of the Four Way Tests... Is it the truth? 

 

Happy Bucks
·    Jim Boyko was very happy to have got in a game of golf yesterday one of the last before winter rules will apply. 
 
·    Frank reported that he was happy to be back home after what he called a disastrous visit overseas to England and Spain.  Bette was not able to join him for a trip to Gibralter because of back problems she succumbed to during their trip and Frank found that he was marooned without his phone numbers after he went for a swim with his I-phone in the pocket of his swim suit. But he is happy to be celebrating his 54th (he thinks) wedding anniversary with his bride Bette. She will refresh his memory.

·    Nadia was happy for a brief vacation with her daughter who is out of school for a week. Her school started a week before others and then has a break later in the Fall.

·    Lillian was happy to again be at one of our meetings. She has been also acting as Rocco’s admin assistant entering details of any donations for the auction.  Rocco added that the time is very short and more donations are required.

·    Arthur donated a happy buck for his daughter’s birthday anniversary which took place yesterday and for his son’s birthday today. She is at Princeton and he in Copenhagen.

·    Gerd started of his ‘joke’ about the flyer and the Pastor who both arrived at the pearly gates. The Pilot was given fancy cloth and a gold staff while the Pastor was given a hemp cloth robe and a wooden staff. Why this discrimination said the Pastor?  Then Gerd had a memory recall issue! He recovered and said St. Peter explained that up here we go by results. The Pilot always landed that was because in his case the passengers all prayed for the plane to land. But the Pastor didn’t do so well because his parishioners always slept when he called for prayers.

 
·    Arthur finished off the club jokester routine but the grumbling suggested that it should be forgotten and Arthur should improve his joke repertoire.

 

 

Gerd introduced our speaker today.  Robert Horst.

 

Robert Horst is the General Manager of the Scarborough Town Centre (The Mall) and has been in that position since 2014. It is a property owned by Oxford Properties which in turn is owned by the pension funds of the municipal employees. Robert explained that he was raised in Scarborough and 

His #1 job is to increase sales which in turn will increas their 20% take as rent. Over the past five years the sales volume had increased over 50%. Scarborough has new momentum now and a big change since 2013 He has 130 employees and they have increased the average retail sales from $600 per 1000 sq. ft. to almost $1,000 sq. ft. This has come about because of changes in motivation of the employees from negative to positive. They came up with a BOLD reward program Be it, Own it, Live it, Do it for the employees.  He says almost all of his marketing budget and put it into events. Remember 80% of Mall sales are made by women.  So the events they have put on were Flower show, Nuit  Blanche, Canada 150 celebration, Luner New Year are all showing more and more first time visitors to arrive and shop in the Mall. This is just an overview of what has been going on at the Scarborough Town Centre to make it a more vital and important centre of activity of the east side of the GTA.

Please listen to Robert’s very interesting report on the renewal of the Mall in the attached link.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uopdfzn9x1usg18/Scarborough%20Town%20Centre.MP3?dl=0

 

Jim Boyko presented Robert with an Operation Eyesight certificate and noted the work that our member Dave Hardy has been spearheading in the Scarborough Renewal efforts which compliment all of the initiatives and improvements that have been undertaken at the Town Center.