Dear Editor,
We live next door to a hotel. We bought our house several years ago thinking that our neighbourhood was zoned strictly for residential housing, but here we are living next door to a fully functioning hostelry with its accompanying parade of short-stay strangers.
Evidently, one of the selling points for this establishment is the chance to look down on our back porch and backyard from their second storey rooms and watch an actual family (you remember, there used to be a lot of those in Richmond) going about their daily routine. And our large lawn must also be an attraction, because we have seen several of the “hotel’s” clients taking photographs of it. It’s such a nice feeling to know that that we are not only providing entertainment for visitors to our city, but also making a contribution to tourism.
Having heard that there are more boutique hotels like the one next door springing-up all over the city, and that one doesn’t seem to need a licence to run one, perhaps we will think about turning our modest abode into a similar kind of haven for travelling businessmen, parachute students, and well-healed tourists.
And there would be a large lawn for them to wander around on. I think it would work.
Ray Arnold
Richmond
