Edmonton Notes for 4/27/2014

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Headlines

• The City’s 2014 construction season officially kicked off on Thursday, featuring $404 million invested in more than 125 arterial road, bridge, interchange, and neighbourhood road projects. One of the big new projects this year is a replacement for the 102 Avenue bridge over Groat Road.
• Downtown is already one of the busiest construction areas in the city, so I really enjoyed this piece by Stuart Thomson. It’s only going to get worse over the next few years! That said, it’s great to see our downtown growing again.
• One of the big downtown projects is of course Rogers Place, the new arena. I’m amazed at how much the dump trucks have already removed. You can stay up-to-date on that project with the official Live View!
• The online portion of the 2014 municipal census ended this evening. When the City reported results on Wednesday, about 25% of Edmonton households had completed the questionnaire online! Door-to-door collection begins May 10.
• The Tour of Alberta will be finishing in Churchill Square this year, after a few days of travelling across the Province. Hopefully they can really build on last year’s event and get more people interested.
• For the fifth year in a row, the number of property assessment complaints filed has dropped. This year just 1,775 complaints were filed with the City’s Assessment Review Board. That’s down from 7,309 in 2009.
• The Harbin Gate currently located in “old Chinatown” but it could be moved to “new Chinatown” under a new plan that Council is moving forward.
• Edmonton’s NextGen Committee is looking to fill two volunteer positions: Communications Co-Chair and Volunteer Engagement Co-Chair.
• Some of you may be happy about the return of motorcycles to our streets, while others just get annoyed by the noise. Either way, the City is encouraging you to share the road.
• I wanted to note that the Downtown CRL was officially approved by the Government of Alberta a couple weeks ago. The baseline for assessed property values is therefore going to be set as of December 31, 2014.
• For the sixth straight year, the University of Alberta has been named one of Canada’s greenest employers.
• A couple weeks ago the City announced it was preparing to release an RFQ for the Valley Line LRT. That request for pre-qualification is now online and will close on June 17.
• The latest DONATE A RIDE campaign will issue 85,060 transit tickets worth $198,396 to local charities.
• We should see much more on the Blatchford project this year, but already the redevelopment has won a National Urban Design Award.
• Another week, another reason to question the wisdom of the Galleria project.
• In case you missed it, Edmonton’s Homeless Commission released its Five Year Update recently.
• The Edmonton Oilers have named Bill Scott as their new Assistant General Manager.
• EEDC’s Brad Ferguson argues that we have a labour shortage problem, not a TFW problem.

“Airship AGA” by Jeff Wallace

Upcoming Events

• The 27th annual Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts takes place on Monday evening at the Winspear Centre. You can learn more about the nominees here.
• This week Edmonton is hosting the International Conference on Urban Traffic Safety at the Shaw Conference Centre.
• AccelerateAB swings back into Edmonton this year, kicking off on Wednesday evening and taking place all day Thursday.
• PC Alberta’s Leader’s Dinner takes place on Thursday evening at the Shaw Conference Centre.
• The Art Gallery of Alberta is holding Art on the Block on Friday evening.
• The spring edition of the Butterdome Craft Sale takes place all weekend at the Butterdome at the University of Alberta.
• It’s that time of year again! The River Valley Clean Up kickoff event is Sunday.
• For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

From Felicia Day: “Visited BioWare in Edmonton and hung out with my true love, Thane.”