Edmonton Notes for 4/3/2011

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• It was another big week for arena news. The City released the latest round of reports on Thursday, and held a media conference that you can watch here. Councillor Caterina questioned the arena construction timeline, while Paula Simons thinks its daft to tie all core revenue growth to the arena project. With the federal election underway, local incumbents and candidates had to weigh in on the issue as well.
• Speaking of the federal election, Dave has the rundown on the election races to watch in Edmonton.
• Preliminary figures indicate that the City of Edmonton posted a record surplus of $42 million in 2010.
• Edmonton made a bunch of lists this week: #8 on Canada’s Best Places to Live 2011 (St. Albert was #5), #4 on the Top 10 Family Vacations in Canada, and #6 on the Top 10 Entrepreneurial Cities in Canada.
• If you present a valid ETS ticket or monthly pass when purchasing admission at the Art Gallery of Alberta you’ll receive a discount equal to the cost of the transit fare ($2.85).
• Here are the Operation 24-Hours numbers for March. A total of 1135 speeding violations and 311 other violations were recorded during the 24 hours beginning March 28 at 7 AM.
• The City has renewed its subscription to Envista Enterprise ROW Coordination for two years. It’s an enterprise map-based coordination system for the public right-of-way.
• Remember, it’s all about awareness: power usage rose 1.01% during last weekend’s Earth Hour.
• Is the coming flood of office space downtown a golden opportunity?
• The City of Edmonton has appealed to the province to halt a new fee to search vehicle license places that could cost the cost $10 million in lost revenue from photo radar and red light tickets.
• Check it out: Old Strathcona rediscovered in an old fashioned film.
• Local radio station 95.7 The Sound changed formats last week to Lite 95.7 and negatively impacted the local music scene in the process.
• The Edmonton Police Service is holding an online town hall on Connect2Edmonton this week. Also: pharmacy robberies are apparently on the rise.
• Longtime Oilers play-by-play man Rod Phillips called his last game on Tuesday – number 3542, to be exact.
• Here’s a great article on the Never Ending Learning conference that was organized by The Learning Centre Literacy Association.
• For more headlines from the past week, check out theedmontonian.com.
• Hope you didn’t get too fooled on Friday. My favorites: The Sprawlette, State of the Edmonton Twitterverses, and a preview of the edmontonian on ShawTV.
• In case you missed it, we launched The Edmonton Champions Project on Thursday night.
• The Oilers are in action at home twice this week, on Tuesday against the Canucks, and on Friday against Minnesota.
• The City-Region Studies Centre is hosting a free lecture on community economic development on Tuesday evening at the Katz Centre on the University of Alberta campus.
• Designing Downtown is happening on Wednesday evening at the AGA. Should be a great event.
• The next interVivos event, Red Tape Diaries, takes place on Thursday evening at Devlin’s on Whyte.
• CityCamp is taking place on Saturday at the Robbins Health Learning Centre.
• That evening, the Rush are home to the Colorado Mammoth.
• Also Saturday is LogiCON, which brings together members of the scientific and skeptic communities. Get your tickets here.
• The next Alley of Light open house is set for Sunday afternoon at Enterprise Square.
• For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

I started shaking my head as soon as I read the first few words of this article:

A new six-lane freeway being planned for southwest Edmonton could someday zip motorists from Anthony Henday Drive to the city boundary at 100 km/h.

That freeway would not be completed for another 40 to 50 years. Why plan for this now? It’s absurd. I can’t believe we’re spending resources on that when we could be building the LRT and removing the need for the freeway altogether.

I had fun at GalaGuru on Friday night! Check out Guru Digital Arts College here.

One of the features at the event: Invisible Art Gallery!

Love the toque!