Recap: High Level Bridge light up on Canada Day

Thousands of Edmontonians lined the river valley on Canada Day to catch a glimpse of not only fireworks, but also the official light up of the High Level Bridge. The project was greenlit back in March when the necessary $2.5 million to purchase and install 50,000 LED bulbs on the bridge was successfully raised. Over the last month the lights were installed and tested in preparation for Canada Day.

There were people everywhere last night – every path, ledge, and patch of grass was claimed by someone eager to see the lights and fireworks! Some folks brought chairs, others had blankets. There were lots of tripods and other camera setups.

As the unveiling approached, singing of “O Canada” and chants of “CAN-A-DA!” could be heard all along River Valley Road. Finally, about five minutes past ten, the lights came on, and a couple minutes later, the fireworks began!

Here’s the official video from Light the Bridge, with music performed by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The music was broadcast live on CKUA.

There was a lot of cheering, oohing, and ahhing as the lights came on. For about two minutes they danced across the bridge, giving us a glimpse of what can be done in the future.

I was cautiously optimistic about how the lights would look, especially as I don’t feel the lights on the ATB Tower downtown look that great. Color me impressed though, they look great! Mayor Iveson, Dave Mowat, and others have been talking about how this could be our postcard photo, and now having seen the lights, I can see what they mean.

It’ll be interesting to see how they light the bridge in the future. We’ve heard that it could be green and gold for the Eskimos, copper and blue for the Oilers, and evidently, rainbow colored for Pride!

Congratulations to Dave Mowat and everyone at ATB, David Stevens and the folks at EPCOR, Tammy Pidner and the team at EEDC, and everyone else who worked hard to make this project a reality!

If you want to buy a bulb, you have until July 11 to do so. If you already bought one, head over to the website to find the location of yours. You can follow Light the Bridge on Twitter for updates.

Edmonton unveils Commonwealth Games 2022 bid committee and logo

Today we’re celebrating Canada’s 147th birthday, and the City took the opportunity to provide an update on its plans for Canada’s 155th birthday. Edmonton is hoping to host the Commonwealth Games in 2022, and at City Hall today Mayor Don Iveson announced both the bid committee and logo.

The bid committee will be led by former Edmonton Airports President & CEO Reg Milley. He showed a lot of enthusiasm today and I think he’ll be a great leader for this effort. Joining him on the initial committee is Vice Chair Simon Farbrother (City Manager), Candice Stasynec (Executive Director, Edmonton Events), Maggie Davison (Vice President, Edmonton Tourism), Lloyd Benz (Government of Alberta), and four members from Commonwealth Games Canada – Dr. Andrew Pipe, Bruce Robertson, Linda Cuthbert and Edmonton’s John Stanton.

From the news release:

“Edmonton has built a strong reputation as an outstanding host city,” says Mayor Don Iveson. “Our bid effort, in partnership with the Alberta government, is focused on convincing Commonwealth Games voters that Edmonton is the best host city in 2022.”

Edmonton has until March 2, 2015 to submit its bid. After site visits in the spring, the host city will be selected on September 2, 2015. Only Durban, South Africa has announced a bid so far. The bid committee will be travelling to Glasgow later this month, to take in the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Reg Milley talked a lot about the importance of community support today. Without it, Edmonton’s bid won’t be successful. The committee is soliciting stories from Edmontonians who have fond memories of the 1978 Commonwealth Games to strengthen the bid. They also started handing out stickers featuring the new logo to Edmontonians in and around City Hall.

To learn more about the bid committee and Edmonton’s campaign, check out the new Edmonton 2022 bid website.

Downtown Edmonton’s Sobeys on 104 Street will close its doors on July 31

After six years of serving the central downtown Edmonton area, Sobeys will close its 104 Street location on July 31. It’s a disappointing end to a store that, while full of promise at its launch in May 2008, never really lived up to its potential. It’s also a high profile loss for 104 Street, which has seen a number of businesses close over the last year or so, and a potential setback for Edmonton’s ongoing downtown revitalization.

Keri Scobie, Communications Manager for Sobeys West, confirmed the closure yesterday. “It was a really tough decision to make,” she told me. “We knew this was going to be a hot topic of discussion.”

Why has Sobeys decided to close the 104 Street location? The bottom line is…it’s all about the bottom line.

A spokesperson told the Globe and Mail late Wednesday that Sobeys had “identified a number of underperforming stores and we have made the decision to close these stores.” It appears the 104 Street location is one of those underperforming stores, and there approximately 50 in total across the country, according to a Sobeys news release:

“Sobeys has determined that consistently underperforming retail stores, representing approximately 50 stores (1.5 million of total gross square footage) and 3.8 percent of the total retail network gross square footage, will close. Approximately sixty percent of the affected stores are located in Western Canada.”

Sobeys is planning to close three other stores in Edmonton as well: Sobeys Mainstreet in Mill Woods at 6440 28 Avenue, Heritage Sobeys at 2011 111 Street, and Clock IGA at 15445 Stony Plain Road. Employees received letters upon arriving at work yesterday informing them of the planned closures. They’ll have the option of transferring to another location. “We have a lot of vacancies at other stores in Edmonton,” Keri said.

In order to get approval for its purchase of Safeway Canada, Sobeys agreed to sell 30 stores in Western Canada. Co-op agreed to purchase three stores in Edmonton and another three in the region, and the fact that the 104 Street location wasn’t one of them was seen as a vote of confidence from Sobeys. Now Sobeys has made it clear that assumption was invalid.

Two Urban Fresh locations in Toronto are also closing, but the second Edmonton location at College Plaza will remain open, as will ten other locations throughout Ontario.

From Urban Fresh to Closure

At the start, it seemed as though Sobeys wouldn’t have any problem attracting customers. “Again and again, the staff at the front door of the new Sobeys on Jasper Avenue and 104th Street smile and apologize, as they turn away would-be customers,” Paula Simons wrote in May 2008, just days before the store officially opened to the public.

When it first opened, the Sobeys on 104 Street was meant to bring a European-style market to downtown. It was the first location to bring Sobeys’ “urban fresh” concept to life – smaller, featuring local food, more prepared items, a cafe, and other urban-friendly amenities. Relationships with the popular City Market were touted, and excitement was high. While initial feedback was mostly positive, it wasn’t long before elements of the initial vision started to fall away. The building still retains the “urban fresh” branding, but that long ago lost any meaning.

In the summer of 2011, Sobeys on 104 Street caused an uproar in the community when it covered its windows with vinyl. Over the first three years of its existence, the store had fully transformed from “urban fresh” to just another grocery store, and residents saw the vinyl windows as the last straw. Sobeys responded to the criticism by meeting with the community and partially removing the vinyl coverings. The communications director at the time, Mike Lupien, indicated that Sobeys wanted to make the store work. “It’s a community store, it’s a neighbourhood store,” Mike said. “We want to be here, and we want to be here for the long-term.”

Today Keri elaborated on why the 104 Street location was identified for closure. “What happens is the size of the store impacts our ability to deliver our brand promise,” she said. “The smaller formats make it harder to deliver what we want to deliver.” She noted the coffee bar takes up quite a bit of room, and shoppers have complained about the smaller selection of products available. I asked her if any alternatives were considered, such as renovating and changing the layout, but she said “given the space and what we have, it was determined it was the best decision to close.”

As a resident on the street, I’m sad to see the Sobeys close. It was great to be able to walk down the block to pickup some milk or a last minute ingredient. I do think the store suffered from long lineups at the checkout (and no express or self-checkouts) and generally indifferent staff, and that made the experience of shopping there much less enjoyable than it could have been. Though prices did come down over the years, they were still higher than other locations, such as Save-On-Foods over on 109 Street.

What’s the impact on downtown?

Cecil Place is the name of the building that houses Sobeys Urban Fresh, named in recognition of the infamous Cecil Hotel. Developed by John Day who purchased the old hotel in May 2003, Cecil Place was designed by Arndt Tkalcic Bengert Architecture and cost $12.6 million to build (it took 14 months to complete). In 2007, it won an Edmonton Urban Design Award. Jurors commented at the time, “if you want to get people downtown this is the way to do it.”

Cecil Place in March 2008, photo by Dave Sutherland

The closure is a loss for 104 Street and downtown, no question. It’s not fatal however, and with new condo towers well underway and the addition of Earth’s General Store in place of the old Pangea organic market further north on 104 Street, I don’t believe the loss of Sobeys will have a lasting impact. Demand will continue to grow as more and more people choose to live downtown and all those new condo towers fill up, and I imagine finding a new tenant for the space today will be much easier than it was back in 2007. Unlike in the past, 104 Street isn’t a gamble anymore.

Sobeys leased the space in Cecil Place, there will be no covenants impacting the ability of another grocer to move in. “That’s not applicable for this location,” Keri clarified. She said the majority of the Sobeys locations being closed were leased.

“If there is a positive,” Keri told me, “it’s that there is a lot of exciting development on the street really reinvigorating that neighbourhood.” However, the bright future of 104 Street wasn’t enough to save the store. “Closing the store was the best decision for us to make.”

What will replace the Sobeys? That remains to be seen, but there’s few other locations downtown that are as attractive as the corner of 104 Street and Jasper Avenue. If I could wave my magic wand, I’d love to see the location turn into a year-round space for the City Market. One can dream, right?

Sobeys in Edmonton

As for Sobeys in Edmonton, Keri told me that Sobeys remains committed. “We see Edmonton as a good market, which is why we’re investing here,” she said. Sobeys is opening a brand new location tomorrow morning in Newcastle at 16943 127 Street. “It’s a new concept store, the third in Western Canada,” Keri explained. “It features a revamped store layout, vibrant colors, and a focus on food discovery throughout the store.” Echoing what was said of Urban Fresh when it opened, Keri suggested the new store will “have a real market feel to it.”

In the cuthroat grocery business, competition is fierce, and Sobeys is constantly evaluating their locations. “We have had great success here in Edmonton,” Keri said, “that’s why we’re bringing the new concept store here.”

Unfortunately, the 104 Street store just hasn’t worked out for Sobeys from a business point-of-view. “We want to thank the community downtown who came in and supported the store,” Keri said.

Get engaged with the new Edmonton Insight Community

The City is unveiling the Edmonton Insight Community (EIC) today, its latest public engagement tool. It provides the City with another way to hear from Edmontonians on an ongoing basis:

“It’s a place to collaborate and communicate with us and others in our community. We want to hear your opinions, learn about your needs, share information with you, and ask you to express what’s most important to you.”

You can sign up right now if you want to (any resident over the age of 15 can join). Or if you prefer, try a demo first.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll see available activities (surveys), a quick poll, newsletters, and survey findings. That last one is launching in July, and I think it’s the most important. “Survey findings will be made available by default,” Cory Segin, Manager of the Office of Public Engagement, told me. He knows that closing the loop is critical. The tool also shows you a listing of all the surveys you have completed, but at the moment I can’t review my responses. That would be a useful addition.

Importantly, the tool is responsive and should work just as well on your mobile device as it does on your desktop. This has always been an issue with the tools selected by the City for public engagement, so it’s great to see that it has been considered from the start for the EIC.

The EIC will allow the City to ask citizens for input without being tied to a specific project’s public consultation plan. That will hopefully mean less “tick the box” consultation, and will potentially lead to new insights. But the EIC is less about replacing other methods of consultation and more about adding another way to engage the public. Not every user will receive every survey – some will only show up for users that have indicated an interest in a specific topic, others may be segregated by demographics. The other major benefit to the City is that they can look at trends, something that is currently very difficult to do.

Here’s what Mayor Don Iveson had to say about the EIC:

The tool is powered by Vision Critical, a Vancouver-based firm that provides “a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that allows companies to build engaged, secure communities of customers they can use continuously, across the enterprise, for ongoing, real-time feedback and insight.” Other cities using their technology include Vancouver, Surrey, and Burlington. Other cities are creating similar communities using alternative tools. It definitely seems like the trend lately is to establish communities that the municipal government can tap into from time to time.

Like most initiatives, the EIC is a pilot project. An internal soft launch took place on June 16, and an external soft launch took place June 19 (which is when many of you reading this were probably invited to join). Now the City is hoping to attract up to 5,000 people to join and take part in the surveys, though estimates have varied quite a bit internally (some feel adoption will be slow, others feel the goal is realistic). I really hope the tool proves to be popular, because I think it’s a big step in the right direction.

One challenge will be getting departments within the City to adopt the tool. There is no requirement that the EIC be used by City staff, and a lot of internal communication will need to take place to ensure they understand the benefits of the tool.

There are many other public engagement related activities in the works at the City, so don’t think of the Edmonton Insight Community as the end. I’ve heard more talk about Open City, Open 311, “Mobile City Hall”, and other technology-based tools and approaches in the last six months than ever before. Public Engagement is of course a new City Council initiative, but it’s also one of Administration’s big three areas of focus for 2014. I’m looking forward to many more innovations and opportunities in the months ahead.

Edmonton’s skyline can now officially rise higher

For all the noise that was made about height restrictions over downtown in recent years, they sure went away quietly today! At a public hearing, City Council made the removal of the Airport Protection Overlay (APO) official, passing Bylaw 16859 without debate. The zoning bylaw no longer references height restrictions, and buildings downtown can now rise to whatever height the market will bear.

Section 810 described special regulations for the Downtown Development Area as follows:

“…the maximum Height of a development within the Downtown Development Area, defined in Appendix I to this Schedule, shall not exceed a Height of 815.34 m above sea level.”

Though the maximum height of each building varied with its specific location, in general, the overlay restricted buildings downtown to a maximum height of about 150 metres. The new EPCOR Tower was built to the maximum height allowed, rising to 149 metres, about two-thirds the height of the Bow building that now dominates Calgary’s skyline. Now, buildings can go even higher.

It was only a matter of time until the Airport Protection Overlay was removed, thanks to the full closure of the City Centre Airport in December. “The removal of the Airport Protection Overlay is considered to be an administrative process directly resulting from the closure of the Edmonton City Centre Airport which underwent significant public consultation,” today’s report read. Still, the outcome marks another milestone in the history of the City Centre Airport.

Our attention has now fully shifted to Blatchford, and rightly so, but the removal of height restrictions could enliven downtown’s development too. There are of course many examples of great cities that have managed to grow with height restrictions in place, such as Paris or London. Removing the Airport Protection Overlay in Edmonton isn’t going to change the fortunes of downtown by itself, but it is one more barrier out of the way. For a good discussion on what the removal of height restrictions over downtown could mean, check out this Avenue Edmonton article.

Edmonton wants to be an open city

Edmonton was one of the first cities in the world to launch an open data catalogue and to embrace the notion of open government. But unlike in the world of tech startups, municipalities don’t enjoy much of a first-mover advantage. Edmonton’s data catalogue has grown slowly over the last four years, and there has been more talk than action when it comes to “open government” initiatives. Has anything been happening behind the scenes? What more can we be doing?

At its March 4, 2014 meeting, Executive Committee asked for an update on “how the City is improving transparency by provision of usable data through the Open Data Catalogue and Open Government approach” to help answer those questions. A report on the Open City Initiative is being discussed today as a result.

Open City Initiative

The Open City Initiative is described as follows:

“Edmonton is aspiring to fulfill its role as a preeminent global city: innovative, inclusive and engaged. Building such a city takes foresight, planning and active participation by its citizens. A great city is an open city.”

“The purpose of the Open City Initiative is to formalize the goals of the organization and empower staff to lead our transition to being an Open City.”

The twelve-page report on the Open City Initiative highlights five principles. As an Open City, Edmonton is transparent, participatory, collaborative, inclusive, and innovative. The initiative also encompasses five goals and related objectives, which I have listed here:

Information and data are managed as a strategic resource.
Edmonton is a connected city.
Employees act responsibly when managing, maintaining and making public information available.
The City will take a coordinated, consistent and strategic approach to public engagement.
The City will employ innovative approaches to engage with Edmontonians in ways that are relevant to them.
City data will be publicly available.
City data will be accessible and usable.
Build accountability and trust through ongoing reporting.
The City proactively provides valued information to the public in multiple channels.
Leverage technology and news business models to enhance service delivery for Edmontonians.
Support dialogue and consultation with constituents and stakeholders.

Collectively, the initiatives and programs underway to support those goals and objectives form the Open City Framework:

Click for a larger version

There’s very little to argue with in the report. Edmonton should be a connected city, the City should take a strategic approach to public engagement, City data should be publicly available, etc. Some of the initiatives shown as “current”, such as the Public Engagement Calendar, still need a lot of work, but the arrows suggest all of those initiatives are ongoing.

Open Data

Though the City first launched a data catalogue in January 2010, it was quickly replaced by the current Socrata-powered catalogue which launched in July 2011. That’s the catalogue they have been building on ever since. There are currently 437 datasets in the catalogue.

Here’s a look at the number of datasets that have been added to the catalogue over time:

It’s certainly not a hockey stick, but it is creeping up (at a rate of 2-3 per week). One of the great things about data catalogues powered by services like Socrata is that you can access a dataset about all the datasets they contain. Here’s the list of all datasets in the City of Edmonton’s data catalog.

Another interesting data point to consider is the freshness of those datasets. Some are historical in nature and don’t need to be updated very often, while others get updated frequently, perhaps every month.

What this shows is that 56% of the datasets available in the catalogue were last updated some time in 2014. My guess is a large percentage of the data managed by the City is more historical in nature, but the catalogue doesn’t reflect that. It’s an important point, because historical data is incredibly important for spotting trends that might result in “new insights and better decision making”.

The City estimates that it manages around 1.64 petabytes of data. If you download the entire data catalogue as it exists today, it’ll take up about 1.9 GB of space¹. That means that it contains just 0.0001% of all the data managed by the City. Not all of that data is appropriate for the catalogue of course, but it does show there’s lots of room for growth.

Positives

I think there are some key positives to highlight in the report. The Open City Initiative establishes a clear connection to The Way Ahead, which is important for ensuring that open data and open government are part of Edmonton’s future.

“The Open City Initiative articulates how the organization will advance the City’s Vision and strategic objectives defined in The Way Ahead and the Open City Principles.”

Another encouraging aspect of the report is how seriously public engagement is treated. There is of course a Council initiative on public engagement underway, and Administration itself has been undertaking actions to improve the way it engages Edmontonians (which at one point was known as the Corporate Approach to Public Engagement). It’s great to see recognition in a City document of the need to incorporate new tools and approaches, including social media, sentiment-analysis, and more. Importantly, the report also highlights the necessity of making the results of public input accessible and readily available to citizens.

I’m excited to see Open 311 mentioned as well. The City’s 311 service seems to have received more criticism than praise over the years, and I think that has slowed down the adoption of technology improvements to the service. I think 311 is an extremely strategic and valuable asset that should be expanded and opened up. There’s not nearly enough reporting back to the public on how effective 311 is, and clear opportunities for deeper and ongoing engagement with citizens are being missed.

Concerns

Though there are many positives in the report, I have some concerns too.

First and foremost, we’ve heard that the City wants to add more datasets to the open data catalogue for years, but as shown above, the pace has not quickened. Why should it be any different this time? Of the 35 data requests publicly submitted by Edmontonians, just 8 have been approved. Some have been open for nearly 3 years, without so much as a comment in response.

Another concern is that while the report lists a number of actions that will be taken to achieve the objectives of the Open City Initiative, none of those actions reference changes to resources. Will new people be hired? Will resources be shifted from other efforts? How is the City going to expand and improve on open data, public engagement, data analytics, and digital service delivery when it’s still the same handful of people doing that work off the sides of their desks?

The only large change that has happened recently was the departure of CIO Chris Moore early this year, which happened just months after the new General Manager of IT and Services Kate Rozmahel re-joined the City. She was formerly the CIO at the City of Edmonton, before moving to the Province of Alberta where she was Assistant Deputy Minister of Service Alberta. I can appreciate she’s only been back for six months, and perhaps needs more time to reorganize her teams, but it’s a concern nonetheless.

Both the provincial and federal governments have become increasingly active in the world of open data and open government, yet there’s no mention of those efforts in this report. Are there no opportunities for connection, or to learn from one another? There’s also no follow-up on previously announced initiatives, such as the G4 working group on a national data strategy or efforts to establish common data formats with other cities.

Most importantly, the lack of any public engagement on the Open City Initiative is really disappointing. There’s absolutely no suggestion in the report that citizens were engaged in the creation of this initiative. I was asked for a quote in March by the consultant that wrote the report, but that’s it. I didn’t provide one, and I see no others mentioned in the report.

The City was very active in 2009 and 2010 in reaching out to Edmontonians interested in open data and open government, but that activity ceased long ago. Aside from the launch of the Citizen Dashboard in 2012, there hasn’t been much action from the City on open data or open government. Yes they participated in International Open Data Day a few months ago, but it was the library that led that initiative. Likewise, the open data hackathon that took place in May was led by the community. There’s a small but growing community of Edmontonians interested in this work!

It doesn’t seem the principles of the Open City Initiative – transparent, participatory, collaborative, inclusive, innovative – applied to the creation of the initiative itself.

Toward a more open Edmonton

This report and the Open City Initiative continue an unfortunate trend: Council asks for an update on how open data is going and Administration replies with the equivalent of “it’s all good.” That’s why Edmonton has never adopted an open charter or Council motion supporting open government like some other cities have. As a result, buy-in from the various silos within the City has been difficult to achieve.

I’m very pleased that the City has identified and articulated a clear set of principles, goals, and objectives with respect to being an open city, but I don’t think that’s enough. The two key missing ingredients here are demonstrable buy-in from citizens, and measurable, impactful actions that will bring the vision of an open Edmonton to life.

I like the direction outlined in the Open City Initiative, unfortunately I just don’t have much confidence that it’ll go beyond a report and lots of talk. I hope Council and the City can prove me wrong, because I want to live in an open city.

The two largest are the Rooflines and Land Use datasets, which together in KML format take up 1.5 GB of space. ↩

Edmonton celebrates the best of women’s soccer in 2014 and 2015

Have you heard about this little tournament taking place in Brazil over the next month known as the World Cup? Of course you have! It’s the global game and perhaps the largest spectacle on Earth and I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. Every four years we get the opportunity to participate in a truly global phenomenon. Go England Go!

Here in Edmonton, we have two other major international football (soccer) tournaments to look forward to. We’re a host city for both the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup Canada 2014 and the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015. These are the two most important tournaments in international women’s football, and we have front row seats.

The U-20 Women’s World Cup is taking place in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Moncton from August 5 through 24. Matches will be played at Commonwealth Stadium on August 5, 8, 13, and a quarter-final game on the 16th. Here are the matches you can look forward to:

Date/Time	Match	Teams
August 5, 2014 at 5pm	Group Stage	China vs. Brazil
August 5, 2014 at 8pm	Group Stage	Germany vs. USA
August 8, 2014 at 5pm	Group Stage	Germany vs. China
August 8, 2014 at 8pm	Group Stage	USA vs. Brazil
August 13, 2014 at 3pm	Group Stage	Paraguay vs. France
August 13, 2014 at 6pm	Group Stage	Nigeria vs. England
August 16, 2014 at 6pm	Quarter-Final	Group 1B vs. Group 2A

You can see the full calendar here. Tickets for the games range from $10 to $30, so it’s very affordable entertainment. You can purchase individual match tickets here. When Edmonton played host to the U-20 Women’s World Cup in 2002, we set the record for the largest single match attendance at 47,400. Let’s beat it!

The Women’s World Cup takes place from June 6 through July 5 in Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Moncton. In addition to hosting the first four matches, Edmonton will also host two matches in the round of 16, one quarter-final, one semi-final, and the third place match. You can see the full calendar here. Tickets go on sale September 10, with prices for passes to all 11 matches ranging from $235 to $495.

Friday, June 6 marked one year to the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015, and to celebrate, a countdown clock was unveiled at City Hall. These clocks are pretty popular in host cities, and it’ll remain at City Hall until next year so you’ve got lots of time to take your photo with it.

The Honourable Rona Ambrose, MP for Edmonton-Spruce Grove, was selected as an official Event Ambassador for next year’s tournament. The theme for Canada’s winning bid was “Welcome the World and Its Game” and Minister Ambrose spoke quite a bit about the multicultural aspect of the game and of Canada.

There are more than 30 million women’s footballers in 185 countries, and more than 350,000 registered women footballers here in Canada. The tournament in 2015 will feature 24 nations and 52 matches, an increase from previous years.

Could the men’s World Cup be coming to Edmonton in the future too? Some suggest that Canada will bid to host the 2026 World Cup, and successful tournaments this year and next will greatly improve our chances of winning.

For now we turn our attention to the World Cup in Brazil. But once that’s all over, you can look forward to some excellent international football right here in Edmonton! You can keep up-to-date with all the news here.

Another tentative step forward for Edmonton’s Blatchford community

Edmonton’s Blatchford Redevelopment project took another step forward today with Council’s approval of the implementation strategy. Will it be the ambitious, carbon neutral, “world-leading” project that has been described over the years? Not necessarily. But it remains the most significant development project in Edmonton’s history, a sustainable and exciting community that will bring housing choice for families into our city’s core.

Blatchford

Today’s Motion

Here’s the motion that was passed today:

That the Blatchford Redevelopment Project implementation strategy be approved and include the following:

The development of a Capital Profile and a funding strategy for Council’s consideration

The implementation of the development approach as outlined in Scenario 5a of Attachment 5 to the June 10, 2014 Sustainable Development report CR_1123rev, including the following key features:

Medium density residential, with high density in direct proximity to LRT station

Town Centre

Institutional lands (NAIT, school sites)

Major park (18.8%)

Urban agriculture

Low impact development

Irrigation system

Custom designed streets

District energy: ambient loop with geo-exchange (preferred: requires further evaluation) or gas-fired cogeneration (in proforma)

High performance building envelopes

Fibre optic network

Affordable housing

Education program

The development of a preliminary timeline for LRT extension into Blatchford and the construction of the Blatchford NAIT LRT station and the Blatchford North LRT station that will accommodate and facilitate the development of the east residential area

A report to be provided to Committee on additional liveability and sustainability features that could be implemented in Blatchford, for example, ambient loop systems, solar photovoltaic panels for homes and/or supplemental to our district energy system, a recreation lake, and accessibility and age-friendly features.

The motion passed 10-2, with Councillors Caterina and Nickel voting against it. Councillor Nickel said the motion didn’t do enough to “hold on to that original vision of being world-class.” Most of the yes votes cited the importance of point 4.

The target for Administration to return with the requested information is October 28, 2014.

What does it mean?

In short, Council decided today that maybe it didn’t need everything that was suggested in the original, award-winning design. The recommended scenario “includes all of the key design elements from the Perkins+Will concept plan and it optimizes investment in environmental and social sustainability features.” By “optimizes investment”, they really mean that features like the ambient loop, geo-exchange district energy system, and pneumatic waste collection system were cut to save money. The recommendation also reduces the size of the major park by about 10% to allow more room for housing. It results in a net profit of nearly $45 million, and would be built-out over 25 years.

The City argues that the modified plan will still provide family-oriented housing, create mixed-use and employment opportunities, and will accommodate NAIT expansion. It still positions Edmonton as “a leader in achieving sustainability” even though it doesn’t go as far as Perkins+Will originally envisaged.

A reasonable compromise

Mayor Iveson has written about the project twice in the last week. Today he shared his thoughts in advance of the Council meeting:

“I don’t think the recommended scenario for Blatchford is a compromise. In fact, I’d say it’s as close to a balanced triple bottom line – social, financial and environmental – as we could hope for. We’ll achieve the ambitious principles set out by council and still produce a reasonable return on our investment.”

That follows his earlier comments:

“Some of the grief Edmonton has endured for poor urban design over the last 50 years can be countered with a project of Blatchford’s scale. This is a story we can share with the world; as good of a reputation-smasher as we’re ever going to see.”

It was great to hear the rest of Council share both his desire to stick to the principles set out by the previous Council and his desire for something impressive.

In voting to move ahead with the modified plan today, Council reached a reasonable compromise. It’s not uncommon for projects to start out far more ambitious than they end up, and it’s Council’s job to try to find the middle ground between citizens’ ambition and Administration’s risk aversion. I think that’s what they did today. No doubt communication about the plans could have been much better, but that could be said of just about every City project.

What happened with Perkins+Will?

Clearly there were issues between Perkins+Will and the City during this process, resulting in the firm attending today’s meeting. Director of Urban Design Joyce Drohan did not mince words once prompted, saying that her firm was “extremely disappointed.” She also called the process “extremely disrespectful.” Before she could get too deep into her criticism, Mayor Iveson stopped her, saying there were other issues at play. He later said that Perkins+Will had “not been cooperative.” There was definitely some animosity present during the meeting today.

Is it just a case of two partners trying to find a way to work together on an ambitious and stressful project? Perhaps, except this isn’t the first time that issues have been raised about the City’s process. Where there’s smoke there’s generally fire. And as Tegan quite rightly pointed out today, “the problem is that the world is watching on this one.” For some reason, Perkins+Will felt they had no choice but to show up in person to publicly defend their work. That’s concerning.

A few Councillors expressed concern today at how the modified Blatchford plan would be received by the public. There’s no question that there’s a communications challenge ahead of Council and the City, but I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to get Edmontonians onside with a pragmatic approach to city building. The bigger challenge is ensuring future partners aren’t turned off working with Edmonton because of the way things were handled with Perkins+Will and the other firms that competed in the international design competition.

Bringing families into the core

Closing the City Centre Airport was a pivotal moment in Edmonton’s history. Finishing the consolidation of air traffic at the Edmonton International Airport, removing the height restrictions imposed on downtown by the Airport Protection Overlay (which could be official as of June 24), putting a distracting and wasteful discussion behind us – those were among the many reasons to support the closure. But the most important reason for me was always the opportunity to increase the density of our city’s core.

I’ve long seen Blatchford as an opportunity to enhance housing choice. It’s a project that will make it increasingly viable for families to live in the core. Imagine the impact of another 30,000 people living just a short train ride from downtown! We’ve already seen what can happen when you increase the number of residents.

Would it be ideal if the project were highly profitable for the City of Edmonton? Sure. Would it be great if the community was carbon neutral? Yes. Would I be thrilled to have cities around the world look upon Blatchford with admiration for its leading edge sustainability? Absolutely. But those things are all secondary for me.

Blatchford

Blatchford, opening 2016?

The expectation is that builders will start to pre-sell homes in 2016, with the first moving moving in late that year or early in 2017. There’s a lot of work to do before we get to that point, but it’s exciting to know that Blatchford will be a reality sooner rather than later.

You can keep up-to-date with the project here.

Politicians in the 2014 Edmonton Pride Parade

Here’s a look at some of the politicians that participated in the Pride Parade that made its way through Edmonton’s downtown early this afternoon.

Premier Dave Hancock

Former premier Alison Redford was the first premier to attend a pride parade when she addressed the crowd in Churchill Square back in 2012. She followed that up last year by becoming the first premier to march in a pride parade when she acted as grand marshal for Calgary’s parade. Premier Dave Hancock became the first premier to participate in Edmonton’s Pride Parade today.

MLA Laurie Blakeman

MLA Raj Sherman

Mayor Don Iveson

Former Edmonton mayor Bill Smith repeatedly refused to proclaim Gay Pride Week in Edmonton, but that all changed in 2005 when former mayor Stephen Mandel proclaimed Pride Week. He became the first Edmonton mayor to participate in a pride parade when he rode that year in a car alongside Michael Phair, the city’s first openly gay elected official. Mayor Don Iveson has supported the parade for years.

Mayor Don Iveson, Councillor Scott McKeen, Councillor Ben Henderson

Councillor Dave Loken

Councillor Andrew Knack

Councillor Michael Walters & Councillor Ben Henderson, photo courtesy Michael Walters

Randy Boissonnault, Liberal nomination candidate for Edmonton Centre

The Liberal Party

The NDP

The Alberta Party

You can see many more photos of the parade here. The Pride Festival runs through June 15.

Photo Tour: Rogers Place construction is well underway!

Construction is well underway on Rogers Place, and yesterday morning the local media had the opportunity to see the activity from above and up close. You can check out the live view here.

We started off with a trip to the top of the EPCOR Tower. From there, you get an excellent view of the 9.5 acre site. When finished, Rogers Place will be about 60% larger than Rexall Place is today. It’ll seat 18,641 for hockey games, and up to 20,734 in a centre stage concert setup.

The former site of the Staples is now empty, and there was limited activity there yesterday.

The Baccarat Casino remains open, and will remain open for as long as they want. The City of Edmonton owns the land and is now their landlord, but the arena development will not encroach on the area where the casino is in any way. It seems strange to me that it could remain open next to the arena, but apparently there’s a strong possibility that’ll happen.

The LRT station is more or less finished, with just signaling to go. There will be some impact to the station once the 5,300 square foot connection to Rogers Place is constructed.

After the media had assembled, the brief press conference was held. On hand to answer questions were: Rick Daviss, Manager of Corporate Properties at the City of Edmonton; Bob Black, Executive VP of the Edmonton Arena Corporation at the Katz Group; Mike Staines, Construction Manager at PCL; Patrick LaForge, President of the Edmonton Oilers; and Dan Valliant, SVP and Project Executive for Rogers Place with ICON Venue Group.

PCL’s Mike Staines gave an update on the construction taking place. “We have around 30 of 400 columns in place, and two or three elevator shafts today.” There are about 150 craftsmen and craftswomen on site working. The steel and concrete structure will be erected starting this fall with two cranes that are three times the size of the ones there today. That work will take about a year.

Next we hopped on a bus to go across the street to see the construction up close.

The crew had setup a PCL flag to denote where Centre Ice will be. About 80,000 m³ of material will be excavated, with up to 300 truck loads removed each day.

Here you can see how deep they have excavated the site, and also the wall that has been setup to separate the arena project from the casino.

About 10,000 pieces of structural steel weighing 9,000 tonnes and 25,000 m³ of concrete will be used in the construction of Rogers Place.

Across the street, there is limited construction activity thus far. Eventually the Winter Garden will cross 104 Avenue, connecting the north and south sites. I expect that’ll be the focus of a future construction update.

Bob Black addressed questions about the arena district right away: “There’ll be much more to come in the coming months as the project evolves. I know that many of you will have questions on the district, and we will be providing details on that very soon. But today, the focus is on Rogers Place.”

Construction has been hugely impactful on the residents of Square 104, but the City of Edmonton’s Rick Daviss said that communication has been good and the City and Katz Group have been quick to take care of any issues that have come up. The City is meeting regularly with residents and business owners in the area.

Rogers Place is slated to open in the fall of 2016. It will bee the first LEED Silver-certified NHL arena in Canada.

You can see more photos of the construction site here.

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From Urban Fresh to Closure

What’s the impact on downtown?

Sobeys in Edmonton

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Open City Initiative

Open Data

Positives

Concerns

Toward a more open Edmonton

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Today’s Motion

What does it mean?

A reasonable compromise

What happened with Perkins+Will?

Bringing families into the core

Blatchford, opening 2016?

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