Without central lake Blatchford ‘gutted,’ says project backer
A major booster of redeveloping the downtown airport lands into a unique and cutting edge neighbourhood says the city’s redevelopment plan has been “gutted.”
Ken Cantor, Qualico’s vicepresident of commercial development for northern Alberta, talked with me about his displeasure with the Blatchford plan on Thursday, the day council made it clear it will not now go ahead with a $7.6 million recreational lake at the Blatchford development.
The question for rest of us is whether it’s a bad thing that several aspects of the Blatchford plan have been junked, such as a $91 million underground pneumatic garbage collection system, a biomass heating plant, a deep geothermal heating system and now this landmark recreational lake. If the plan were too grandiose in the first place, it could well be a good thing it’s being scaled back, bit by bit.
This latest bit means that instead of a lake for swimming and canoeing in Blatchford’s central park, we’ll get two large storm sewer ponds where all recreational activity is banned. As Mayor Don Iveson explained. “They’re not lakes, they are stormwater management facilities, which is an ugly name for a water feature.” Indeed it is. And stormwater ponds certainly aren’t what we were sold back when we approved this plan, Cantor says.
Like many Edmontonians, Cantor became enamoured with the idea of the special community planned for the airport lands, including images of a huge lake with canoes on it. During the 2011 design competition, Joyce Drohan, leader of the winning Perkins and Will design team, argued a lake or canal were absolutely needed to entice people away from the suburbs to live at Blatchford: “The city of Edmonton has one spectacular open space, which is the river. Everybody relates to it. Everybody talks about it. We thought, ‘But nobody talks about any open spaces in the northern part of the city.’ We thought there should be a counterpoint to the river. It’s not ever going to compete with the river, but it’s a fantastic open space for all of the communities around here.”
Cantor recalls the excitement when the five international firms on the final shortlist presented their visions in words and pictures at City Hall.
“We all supported the selection of that one (Perkins and Will) as the cream of a very good crop. We selected the best of the best. And then we took control of it and we gutted it.”
One reason the lake was dropped is because it would be a major attraction drawing people with cars from all over, says Mark Hall, executive director of the redevelopment project. That doesn’t fit with a green, walkable community.
But Cantor points out the Blatchford lake park would be the only major Edmonton park that could easily be accessed by the LRT.
Hall says that while the stormwater ponds won’t be quite as big as the original lake, they will still be sizable, one five hectares, the other six.
The goal is to get more developable land in the neighbourhood, Hall says. “We basically rationalized the size of the storm ponds so we’re not over building storm facilities at the expense of development land.”
Coun. Bev Esslinger says the main planks of the original vision are still in place.
“The principles haven’t been violated. I think we have to honour what we said we’d do. Some would argue this is two lakes, not one big lake. It’s still the same mass of water so I’m OK with that. I think what we are is committed to maintain that green, sustainable community. We want to have a walkable place for people to enjoy.”
Adds Hall: “We think the goals that council has for this community are ambitious to begin with. We’re doing things that other developments haven’t done and it comes at a cost. What we’re trying to do is balance off the cost of innovating ... against the need at some point in time to actually get on with the development and make this a success.”
Esslinger and Hall’s arguments make sense. The city has an extremely difficult task to turn the airport lands into a green, walkable, densely populated neighbourhood. We certainly don’t want to see empty lands sitting vacant year after year, the kind of thing we have at the city’s failed transit-oriented development scheme around Belvedere LRT station.
It’s not fun or sexy to go with stormwater management facilities over a gorgeous lake, but if that’s what it takes to keep our eyes on the real prize, so be it.