maces Weather: Wednesday and Thursday mostly cloudy. Highs near 6°C. INDEX Auto.............. 14 Business...........24 Classified Ads.......38 Doug Collins........ 9 Comics ............ 36 Editorial Page....... 6 Bob Hunter......... 4 Lifestyles .......... 29 Mailbox............ 7 Sports.............19 TV Listings.........37 What's Going On... .36 AN OFFER from a developer to buy the recently closed Park Plaza Country Club for $2.1 million has been accepted by the property’s receiver-manager. ’ Thorne Riddell (now Thorne, Ernst & Whinney) spokesman Robert Cobb confirmed accep- tance of the offer Monday, and said the deal to buy the 4.38 acre property is subject to a court deci- sion that will be made Friday or early next week. Any redevelopment will also be subject to North Vancouver District’s rezoning of the area. But a representative for a group of local businessmen, who had made an offer to Thorne Riddell to buy Park Plaza club and maintain it as a country club, says the deal to sell the property to a developer comes at the expense of Park Plaza members. Local publisher Tom Sutherland said he and three other area By TIMOTHY RE News Reporter businessmen had offered the receiver-manager $1 million cash for the financially-ailing club late last week after he learned it was slated to close Jan. 16. “We think there is something wrong with this whole thing,’ Sutherland said Monday. ‘*We wanted to save the club and made a legitimate offer to buy it for $1 million right now. We are 100 per cent confident that the club could, with the right management, be competitive with the other North Shore clubs. We don’t think the receiver tried hard enough.”’ But Cobb said there was nothing wrong with the $1 million offer, it 3 - Wednesday, January 21, 1987 - North Shore News $2.%7m _ offer accepte was simply ‘not accepted."’ He denied accusations from former club members that no at- tempt had been made to keep the club alive because it had been earmarked for redevelopment. Club memberships were priced at 50 per cent of North Shore market value, he said, to attract new members, ‘*And, yes, we had new members signing up.’’ Cobb said, “but we had just as many who did not renew their memberships. So we just weren't able to make it (the club) a viable operation.” Park Piaza was placed in receivership June 13 following a court order that appointed Thorne Riddell the club’s receiver- manager. Cobb said advertising for Park Plaza was discontinued in early September after results ‘‘did not look encouraging.’’ Though a portion of the 660 displaced club members have said in previous News stories that they would have been willing to pay at least 50 per cent more in member- ship fees and urged tennis and ra- quet court usage fees be instituted to keep the club alive, Cobb said the North Shore fitness club mar- ket was saturated, and charging more for memberships would not have solved the club’s problems. According to court documents, Canada Trustco was owed about $2 million by the club. Former Park Plaza general manager Az Ansari has said people who purchased club memberships prior to June 13 will get no refund and those who purchased member- ships after the club went into receivership will be charged up to Jan. 16, when the club closed, and then be reimbursed any monies remaining on their memberships thereafter. In addition to the displaced club members, 11 employees lost their jobs when the club closed. Hazardous product increase wanted THE PARADOXICAL long- of hazardous graphite mud term solution to the problem currently being stockpiled at Erco Industries in North Vancouver lies in an increase in plant production. District council considered Er- co’s bid Monday for a develop- ment permit to enable the com- pany to begin a $45 million upgrade and expansion of its sodi- um chlorate plant. Phase one of the expansion, ex- pected to be completed in early 1988, will increase the plant's an- nual capacity by 22,000 tonnes to 76,000 tonnes of sodium chlorate, a hazardous material used by the pulp and paper industry. Phase two, slated for completion in 1991, will replace the older pro- duction technology currently used, News Reporter with a new technology which doesn’t produce a graphite waste product. The plant is currently stockpiling graphite slurry residue, the byproduct of the breakdown of graphite electrodes used in the process of producing. sodium chlorate. Erco presently produces over 50 tonnes of solid waste a year. The majority is spent graphite mud containing cadmium and chromi- um. Plant manager Brian Smyth says Erco is presently storing 100 to 140 tonnes of the chemical sludge in steel tanks. Although prohibited material for the site, the waste was dumped at the Premier Street Landfill until 1981 and subsequently was shipped to a site in Arlington, Washington. “Regulations have changed and tightened up,’’ said Smyth. “We've been active in trying to get a disposal site in B.C. We’re in the process of trying to wash the slurry here and render it inert.’’ Ald. Ernie Crist questioned Smyth on the above acceptable level sodium chlorate contamina- tion of well water at the site — currently measuring approximately 150 parts per million. BCIT course battles computer illiteracy A- NEW computer course on the North Shore has taken the classroom out of teaching. News Reporter “The best form of learning is by doing, so the more you do the more you learn,’’ says program coordinator Doug Smith, of the British Columbia Institute of Technology. - “Most colleges and universities (use) the old lecture format (for computer courses), where some of it sinks in and some of it doesn’t,” Smith said. This is the first time BCIT has offered a course on the North Shore. And instead of being located in a school environment, the course is available at Lonsdale Quay, beside the SeaBus terminal. Smith said he believes BCIT’s concept of learning computer skills will remain with the students once they’ve finished the 15-hour course, He said the course is self-paced training, where the instructor is basically the computer. But if dif- ficulties arise the computer will emit a beeping sound and a staff person will assist, he added. Smith said at the course comple- tion a student will have learned basic computer skills, word pro- cessing and other computer ap- plications, such as spreadsheets, accounting and writing a com- puter-aided design program. “This course develops a stu- dent’s confidence. So that he can sit here without becoming intimi- dated.”’ Smith said he believes the ma- jority of the population is ‘‘com- puter illiterate,’ but within the next few years people must become “computer fluent.” “The computer touches every aspect of our life. We’re leaving the production and manufacturing age and getting into the informa- tion age. This course is their launch into the future.’’ Smith said BCIT is trying to reach people who missed computer training while at high school and college, or those who learned out- dated programming courses while at school. . . He said the. average age for.stu- - dents is 35, but the BCIT Com- puter Access Centre has seen stu- dents from age 23 to 63. He said students follow up a three-hour orientation lecture with. 12 hours of work on a computer at one of the station’s ‘16 skill sta- tions.” All of the computers at the cen- tre are IBM compatible. He said the centre aiso has an extensive library of software, and will rent out its facilities to individuals for $9 an hour. The centre has three different sizes of computers - personal com- puters, main frame computers and mini-frame computers. BCIT has campuses in Van- couver, Burnaby and Surrey, but at this point the other locations do not offer. the computer access course. “The course is something new so we wanted it to stand alone. If we were to merge it with our existing computer courses it may have got lost in the shuffle.”’ . The cost of the course is $125. The centre is open from noon to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday and from noon to 4 p.m. Fridays and -Saturdays.: + +--+ -+.--- “Ground water is a different issue and is not regulated by Waste Management,” said Smyth. But in a letter to the district planning department Smyth admits that the leakage may be from the plant’s old graphite area. Smyth said all sumps in the plant are currently being sealed with titanium in an effort to eliminate the problem. Although effluent discharged in- to the Burrard Inlet will increase 10 per cent in phase one, Smyth said it would decrease to three per cent by phase two. A $24,000 en- vironmental impact study con- tracted by Erco at the request of the district states the B.C. Waste Management Branch of the Ministry of Environment is not concerned about the increase. The Air Quality Division of the GVRD, which monitors the 24- hour operation’s atmospheric emissions of chlorine, sodium chlorate and auxiliary fuel during the day, sees no problem with in- creased discharge. But district staff expressed con- cern regarding increased plant ca- pacity increasing the potential for off-site shipping accidents. A joint municipal, provincial and federal government study on hazardous goods movement throughout the Lower Mainland will address the issue this year. “I'm hoping that we rationalize the best way to move hazardous goods safely,’’ said Mayor Marilyn Baker. A public meeting on the applica- tion is slated for Feb. 23. KEEPING AN eye on the progress of students at the BCIT Computer Access Centre are staff members iris Kobayakawa and Vivienne Plunket, standing. The students are, left to right, Mary White and Barbara Phillips. The centre, located near North Vancouver’s SeaBus terminal, . teaches students computer skills at their own pace.