More Griesbach, no Blatchford please
When Kris Andreychuk is out knocking on doors in the Ward 7 neighbourhoods around Northlands Coliseum, residents speak to him in a kind of code that only Edmontonians will understand.
We want Griesbach, they tell Andreychuk. We don’t want Blatchford.
What they mean is that at the dead or dying Northlands site, they want a redevelopment just like Griesbach, a walkable, attractive neighbourhood of homes, townhouses and lowrise apartment buildings where people don’t have to get in a car to go to buy groceries.
Griesbach was built on old Canadian military lands.
What they don’t want is a hugely ambitious project like Blatchford, where the city is acting as the developer on the site of the old downtown airport. It hopes to build a net-zero greentopia, but one that will likely take hundreds of millions in government investment to be fully realized.
“The two kind of comparisons that people hold in their mind are Blatchford, that is yet to break ground, or Griesbach, which gets a lot of people excited,” says Andreychuk, a social worker.
“The danger would be to come up with a perfect plan that is over-reaching, that is too aspirational. The last thing we need is a perfect plan that just collects dust. We have to balance aspiration with some pragmatism.”
The development plan for the Northlands site has to reflect what the surrounding communities want — and a big part of what they want is housing and streets that will attract investment so a developer will start to build right away, not many years off.
But it’s not just in northcentral Edmonton that the Griesbach-not-Blatchford notion should prevail.
A number of undeveloped or badly developed lands blot the Edmonton landscape. It will be no easy thing to properly redevelop these sites, especially if anyone thinks government alone should lead the way.
No matter how many fine plans the city comes up with for Blatchford, or for Northlands, or for the old Epcor power plant and the vacant lots of West Rossdale, nothing significant will happen without private investment, or perhaps a partnership between the city government and business interests.
I don’t know what form of private-public partnership will drive new success stories, but in this civic election, it’s crucial we elect councillors who aren’t convinced that city politicians and planning officials know best when it comes to city building.
Postmedia and Mainstreet just did a poll on the future of the Northlands site and while the results are interesting — with older people far more interested than younger people in saving and repurposing the old arena, and with much more support for redeveloping the area as a festival site as opposed to a residential and commercial area — the heart of the issue is who is going to pay for whatever comes next.
Federal and provincial governments are now running ugly deficits. The city is close to its borrowing limits. It’s unlikely any government is going to save the day in terms of repurposing the Northlands site or the old power plant.
Yet if the city is open and willing to work with business, solutions may present themselves.
Unfortunately, the last time businesspeople came forward with a plan for West Rossdale, council was cold. The plan included a canal to help raise the attractiveness of the area. Water features such as large man-made lakes are common and successful in helping to attract investment and interest in suburban developments, but council raised far more objections than it showed any kind of enthusiasm for the canal.
A number of candidates, though, are willing to work with business or even allow business to take over as the driver. In the southwest Ward 9 council race, candidates Tim Cartmell and Payman Paresayen have spoken out against the city being the lead developer at Blatchford.
West-end candidate Sarah Hamilton in Ward 5 has similar concerns: “I’m not entirely sure why the city is getting into the development game. We’ve sunk a lot of money into Blatchford — and that’s something that developers do. Developers develop land, they know the market. I think the city is sitting at like $80 million in Blatchford and it’s going to be years before a home is built there. I think we need to get out of the project.”
In Rossdale, Blatchford and Northlands, the quicker our next council recognizes its own limits as a city builder, the faster we’ll move and the better the end result will be.