Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• From the City: “When Edmonton’s outdoor pools close at the end of the summer, almost 2 million litres of clean, dechlorinated water will be recycled to irrigate nearby parks rather than being drained into the sanitary sewer system.” Very cool!
• Monday is a holiday, but the rest of the week is going to be busy. DemoCampEdmonton8 takes place on Wednesday, and Twestival Local 2009 takes place on Thursday.
• Lillian Osborne High School is the first big public high school to open in Edmonton in 25 years.
• Movies on the Square is tonight – they are screening UP!
• For more events, be sure to check out Sharon’s fantastic list of September events in Edmonton.
• The City announced recommended routes for the West and Southeast LRT extensions. I wrote about it here and here.
• The Miss dEdmonton contest started September 1st and runs until September 30th. To learn more and to submit your 90 second video, click here.
• From Andy at The Battle of Alberta: Downtown Arena Primer. From today’s Journal: New arena feeds rivalry.
• Registration for Edmonton Code Camp 2009 is now open!
• Will Grant MacEwan College become a university this month?
• About 500 people attended a town hall meeting this week to air concerns about the Alberta Hospital closure.
• The City Centre Market is still open until October 10th! Enjoy it while it lasts!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise: the City’s decision to close the City Centre Airport is going to end up in court. I’ll have more on this later.
• Sharon has a great list of ten things to do in Edmonton before summer’s out! Make the most of it.
• The Edmonton Public Library is holding a Back to School Book Sale today through Tuesday.
• At least 240 trees on City land were destroyed in last month’s big storm, and the total clean up fee came to $1.5 million.
• The Pride Centre of Edmonton received $24,000 from City Council on Monday to help it operate over the next two years while it looks for funding.
• Transit riders taken note: fall service changes go into effect tomorrow for Edmonton Transit and St. Albert Transit, and on Monday for Strathcona Country Transit.
• Speaking of transit, it seems that there may be a temporary parking lot near the new Century Park LRT station when it opens.
• Daryl Katz is expected to announce an ambitious $1 billion downtown redevelopment project in the next couple of weeks, the core of which is a new arena for the Edmonton Oilers. Andy has some good commentary and links.
• An Edmonton playground is the first in Canada to have LED digital features. Because you know, kids don’t have enough electronic toys at home.
• Here’s the latest Edmonton Next Gen weekly newsletter.
• Edmonton Stories now has leaderboards up on the website! Remember to vote for your favorite stories.
• Scott McKeen wrote about dEdmonton this week! Nice to see the festival get some early press. He also wrote an odd piece about Councillor’s Executive Assistants.
• Twestival Local 2009 is taking place in Edmonton on September 10th at Original Joe’s on 109th Street. Stay tuned here for more information.
• HIV Edmonton is hosting the Scotiabank AIDS Walk For Life on September 20th. I’ll be walking again this year! If you’d like to sponsor me, you can do so here. Thanks!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• It’s official: Transcend Coffee is opening its second location in the historic Garneau Theatre building. Very cool!
• A dedicated bus lane from Jasper Place Transit Centre to 149th Street along Stony Plain Road started on Thursday. The City is looking at additional ways to expedite travel from the west end to downtown.
• Chris Szydlowski finally received permission to run Segway tours of the river valley! The tours run two hours in length and start at $90. Check out Segway Edmonton for more information.
• A new proposal to transform Edmonton into a more walkable, cycling-friendly city is going to the transportation and public works committee next Tuesday. Councillor Don Iveson says the plan isn’t bold enough.
• This is just silly: “After failing to find any litterbugs on Jasper Avenue earlier this week, an undercover bylaw officer on Wednesday issued the first $250 littering fine under the new crackdown. The city brought in the plainclothes officer from another area since uniformed peace officers failed to find a litterer on Jasper Avenue the first two days of this week.”
• I wrote a guest post for The Edmontonian this week on Gariepy Block and what’s opening there in the fall. Check it out!
• Good article on Crossroads Downtown, an E4C housing project designed to help women and transgendered individuals.
• DemoCamp Edmonton 8 is taking place on September 9th! Mark your calendar!
• Sharon and I went to check out Edmonton’s first East Meets West Festival today in Chinatown. It was kinda neat, but very spread out for some reason. You can see my photos here.

• We also walked past the new Art Gallery of Alberta, which is coming along. The lead architect for the project, Randall Stout, is giving a presentation on September 19th.

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• The Journal has been running an interesting series for a few weeks called 52 Reasons to Love Edmonton. If you want to suggest a reason, contact Jennifer Fong via email or on Twitter.
• Another great post this week from Adam, this time on “The Great Pyramids of Edmonton” – The Muttart Conservatory.
• The new Rexall Drug Store on Jasper Avenue and 108th Street opens to the public on Monday, August 17th! Also opening in the building soon is another Subway, and a Second Cup.
• According to a recent Statistics Canada study (that I haven’t found yet), 78% of Edmontonians regularly use the Internet for social networking, information seeking, and commerce.
• Edmonton’s Operation Red Nose might not operate this coming holiday season.
• Here’s the latest Edmonton Next Gen weekly newsletter, and here’s Original Fare’s guide to Living Local in August.
• The Dawson Bridge will be shut down from January until November next year so that it can be renovated – work that is long due!
• The artsScene Edmonton Summer Party is coming up on the 20th – don’t miss it! Get your tickets here.
• For the second year in a row, Edmonton International Airport (EIA) was awarded the the Peggy G. Hereford Award to honour overall creativity and excellent is marketing and PR among North American airports.
• You can now book tee times at City of Edmonton golf courses online!
• It’s Fringe time in Edmonton! Don’t miss Sharon’s great post, Ten Things to Love About the Fringe. We spent the day there today, and will be back tomorrow and many other days over the course of the festival.

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• Did you know the Edmonton Folk Music Festival was on? It’s hard to miss 🙂 You can get the latest at Twitter. The big story this week was that EFMF didn’t receive any federal funding, though both Calgary and Winnipeg did.
• Adam wrote a great post this week called Edmonton’s problem. It’s definitely worth a read, and don’t miss the comments either.
• ENTS continues to get some good press: they were featured in Vue Weekly on Thursday.
• Edmonton is up against London, ON and Halifax, NS for the national Communities in Bloom competition. The judges visited this week. Our city last won in 1997 and 2000.
• Edmonton Transit is upgrading the LRT signal system this weekend, so service is slightly disrupted.
• Here’s the latest Next Gen Weekly newsletter.
• More than 52,800 kg of food and about $97,000 was collected for the Edmonton Food Bank at this year’s Heritage Festival.
• The Clover Bar landfill, which has operated 20 years longer than anticipated, will stop accepting trash by August 17th. Currently about 60% of Edmonton’s garbage is recycled or composted, and that figure is expected to grow to more than 90% when a new gasification plant opens next year.
• Apparently Bob Barker is coming to Edmonton next month to fight for Lucy the elephant’s release.
• The Fringe starts on Thursday!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• Checking out the Servus Heritage Festival this weekend? Here is the relevant transit/parking information. The annual festival is the largest food drive of the year for the Edmonton Food Bank. Follow @EdmHeritageFest and @yegfoodbank on Twitter.
• Nothing new if you’re familiar with the space, but the City now has a page listing all of its social media activities.
• The City announced this week that due to declining construction costs, its road repair dollars will be stretched to include some projects that wouldn’t have taken place until next year.
• An alternative to the EPS Crime Mapping website: SpotCrime.
• The U-Pass program cost the City about $6.6 million last year, but it was worth it – ridership doubled.
• The Edmonton Humane Society typical receives 10 to 15 new animals per day, but lately it has been more like 40 to 60, something they blame on the recession.
• Three new websites launched this week: ArtsScene Edmonton, Tix on the Square, and Edmonton Arts Council.
• A new urban design award competition was announced this week. Submissions are due by October 8th.
• Have you noticed a lot of grasshoppers around the City? There’s a reason. The Edmontonian has the scoop.
• Here’s another great list of events for August from Sharon.

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• It’s Indy weekend here in Edmonton, and you can hear the cars pretty far away from the City Centre Airport. It’s also the final weekend for Capital EX.
• At long last, the province of Alberta decided to put some funding behind our bid for EXPO 2017. Very good news.
• Council voted this week to expand the number of wards from six to twelve. I’ve got some links and data here.
• The Edmonton & Northern Alberta District Historical Festival started yesterday and runs until August 2nd.
• You can see the latest Next Gen weekly newsletter here. If you haven’t already, consider subscribing, it’s well worth it.
• The City’s IT department was in the news twice this week: once for apparently divorcing Microsoft, and again today for starting to move forward with making open data available.
• Apparently the Shaw Conference Centre needs to expand, but there probably isn’t space at its current location.
• The next Movies on the Square night is happening July 31st!
• Sadly, there has been an increase in the number of street children looking for a place to sleep – the Youth Emergency Shelter has been full nearly every night.
• The Citizen Panel finally presented it’s report to City Council this week.
• I like the idea of more murals around the city!
• Maybe it’s because I know nothing about basketball, but I really dislike the name of the tournament coming up in Churchill Square: Who’s Got Next?
• The City of Edmonton’s new calendar site went live this week! It has RSS and iCal feeds, finally. Check it out.

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• Capital EX kicked off yesterday, with the parade taking place on Thursday. The festival runs until July 26th.
• Macleans published a new list of Canada’s best and worst run cities. Edmonton ranks 18th overall.
• Very interesting read I came across this week – How to fool City Council and the public: Edmonton’s Eaton Centre.
• Patricia Grell is pushing to have residential speed limits lowered. She’s got a blog going, and tells me she’s going to explore using Twitter too! The issue goes before Council in October.
• The Edmonton Public Library has expanded its service hours, made possible by the provinicial funding increase for public libraries announced back in April. EPL is now open 60 hours a week across 16 branches (PDF release).
• Edmonton Transit’s historical tours started up again this week, and run until August 15th. Also on the topic of transit: Plexiglass shields are being installed on buses along problem routes in an effort to improve driver safety.
• The Premier’s annual pancake breakfast will be held on Tuesday, July 21st from 7am to 9am at the Alberta Legislature.
• Taste of Edmonton started yesterday and runs until July 26th. Forty restaurants are participating!
• EdmontonStories.ca is running a Twitter Indy Contest that I’m happy to be judging along with Brittney Le Blanc and Paula Simons. All you’ve gotta do is tweet your Edmonton moment and use the hashtag #yegmoment by July 22nd at 11:59pm. The grand prize is a lap around the track with an Indy Racing League licensed driver! The Indy itself runs July 24-26.
• Coming up next week: a 12 ward system in Edmonton.

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• City Council voted to close the City Centre Airport in phases.
• The City launched a new Photo Archives website this week, with 25,000 historic photos now available.
• Homeward Trust Edmonton is looking for board members. The deadline for applications is July 31st.
• The 13-year-old South Edmonton Common is the largest power centre in Canada, covering roughly 89 hectares of land with nearly 150 stores and 2.3 million square feet of retail space. Good article in today’s Journal.
• New details on the pole-mounted ashtrays that have appeared along Whyte Avenue and Jasper Avenue: there are 192 in total, and the total cost for the one-year pilot projects is $138,000.
• Food Inc. premieres in Edmonton on Wednesday evening. Leave a comment on Sharon’s post by noon tomorrow to win tickets!
• In the first 48 days after launch, Edmonton Stories received 62 new stories, over 32,000 visits including 23,939 uniques, and visitors from over 92 countries.
• Here’s your guide to Living Local in July from Original Fare & Keep Edmonton Original.
• Demolition of the Arlington Apartments is being called one of the nation’s worst heritage site losses this year by the Heritage Canada Foundation.
• Edmonton is getting a new $9 million waste-to-biofuels research centre, which should be completed in 2010.
• Council voted on Wednesday to keep the Scona pool operating until the end of 2009, but beyond that the facility has not yet secured any funding.
• Two new downtown condo towers were approved on Monday, the Raintree and the Tango. Yay for increasing density!
• The fire ban has been lifted, thanks to the recent downpour of rain.
• Nominations for Avenue Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 close on July 15th!
• Capital EX starts on Friday. The parade runs from 10am to 12:30pm downtown on Thursday, July 16.

The 2009 Edmonton Street Performers Festival wraps up tomorrow afternoon at Churchill Square. There will be a closing group show at 3pm!

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

• On Monday evening at 7pm, fusedlogic will be hosting The Great Edmonton Airport Debate. Myself, David MacLean from AEG, and potentially a few others will be on a panel to discuss the City Centre Airport, which you can watch live and participate in online. For a preview, you can watch our five minute segment from Alberta Primetime here.
• The issue goes before Council on Wednesday, July 8th at 1:30pm. I’ll be there. You can find the agenda here.
• The Next Gen Community Challenge is taking place on Wednesday evening at Orange Hall in Strathcona. Details can be found here.
• It’s official: the LRT will be going to NAIT before Gorman. Speaking of transit, summer service changes are now in effect.
• Good news for Edmonton hockey fans (despite the Heatley debacle): Rod Phillips will be back for his 37th consecutive year as the voice of the Oilers.
• Lots of chatter about the Epcor sale this week. The Journal’s headline says it all: Epcor sale ‘a major abuse of power’
• On Saturday, July 11th the Valley Zoo will celebrate its 50th anniversary with an event called On Safari 2009. Eighteen local restaurants and businesses will be offering samplings. Tickets are $50.
• Yesterday was the kickoff for the Edmonton Street Performers Festival. I posted a few photos here.
• Sharon wrote a great guest column at C2E this week called Edmonton’s Dining Passport. Worth a read!
• Also from Sharon: another great list of July events in Edmonton.
• Edmonton’s 2009 census data is now available online. It’s in PDF format, but they’re looking into additional formats such as CSV.
• There’s a relatively new Edmonton blog you should check out: The Edmontonian. They’re also on Twitter here.
• On Tuesday evening ENTS is holding another meeting at the Elephant & Castle downtown. Details here.