Edmonton Notes for 3/1/2015

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Headlines

• The Artery will close its doors on March 31 after the City determined its foundation isn’t structurally sound. The City bought the building and will be demolishing it to make way for the Valley Line LRT.
• Do you want to save the McDougall Church? There’s a petition at Change.org that currently has 793 supporters. Council will be discussing the issue again this week, with a recommendation to ask the Province for assistance. Here’s a feature on the church from Vintage Edmonton. Jodine says the crisis at McDougall did not happen overnight.
• Taking the LRT to Southgate? There’s now free wifi at Southgate LRT Station, the first of a planned expansion throughout the network this year and next.
• The Freezeway was a hot topic of discussion this week, but not in Edmonton. Thanks to a BBC article, the idea was on the front page of Reddit and was also featured on Buzzfeed.
• Pothole season is here thanks to the warmer weather. The City filled 17,000 potholes in January alone.
• Representatives from the City and Leduc County met on Friday to further annexation negotiations. The next session is scheduled to take place on March 20, 2015.
• Avenue Edmonton’s Best Restaurants issue for 2015 is now available! Congrats to Rostizado, named Best New Restaurant!
• Council is starting to talk about where the next round of LRT funding is going to come from, and it sounds as though a PR campaign will be launched to help in that effort. Lorne Gunter says “the proposed lines simply won’t encourage enough people to get out of their cars and into transit.” He calls the proposed western leg of the Valley Line LRT “particularly insane.”
• Former Oilers captain Al Hamilton will be inducted into the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame this year. Former Oilers assistant GM Bruce MacGregor and Oilers dressing room attendant Joey Moss will both be inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame. Here are 20 questions with Joey Moss.
• This is a neat idea: a Twitter account that tweets suggestions from the Edmonton Public Library collection based on trending topics. Check out @edmontonreads on Twitter.
• Concerned about radicalization in Edmonton? “It is imperative we, as a police service and a society, look at terrorism and radicalization as extremist criminal behaviours,” says Insp. Dan Jones with the EPS Investigative Support Branch. “This criminal activity is not about placing blame on a specific race, religion, culture or community.”
• Did you miss Edmonton’s inaugural food fight? Here’s a recap from Cindy.
• Fewer young people are choosing to be entrepreneurs, but Edmonton may be bucking that trend.
• Former three-term City Councillor Una MacLean Evans died Tuesday morning at the age of 88.
• In case you missed it: Councillor Scott McKeen makes the case for a “wet shelter” for downtown.
• Edmonton is home to 347 bridges and overpasses currently, and each is inspected regularly by Senior Bridge Engineer Shiraz Kanji and his team. “This is a great time for bridges in Edmonton,” he says.
• One of the new bridge projects underway is of course the Walterdale Bridge. The 200-meter-plus arches were constructed in South Korea and are set to arrive in Edmonton at the end of March.
• For more recent headlines, check out ShareEdmonton.

Hyatt Hotel Construction in The Quarters, photo by Darren Kirby

Upcoming Events

• Don’t miss the second Old Yeg Cafe on Monday evening, this time on historic neighbourhoods and the Mature Neighbourhood Overlay.
• The third annual Google in Education Alberta Summit takes place on Monday and Tuesday at the Edmonton Expo Centre.
• The Oilers host the Kings on Tuesday evening.
• Head over to the Yellowhead Brewery on Wednesday evening for the next Green Drinks themed Local Food DIY. Here are some of the featured guests.
• Pecha Kucha Night 21 takes place at Northlands Park on Thursday evening.
• The Oil Kings host the Regina Pats on Friday evening and the Calgary Hitmen the following night.
• Also Friday night, the Pedcrawl returns! Get lost in the pedway, learn something about wayfinding, and have some fun in the process!
• For 54 hours on the weekend, teams will work to turn their ideas for improving education into reality at Startup Weekend EDU Edmonton taking place at NAIT.
• Edmonton Coffee Week is coming up from March 7 to 15!
• The Edmonton Rush host the Calgary Roughnecks on Sunday afternoon.
• For more upcoming events, check out ShareEdmonton.

Crashed Ice winds through the Shaw, photo by Darren Kirby