Gondola idea wins Edmonton Project contest
River valley gondola is ambitious to be sure, but less pricey option might be more doable
One way to a better Edmonton is to build on our strengths, but a competing notion is to take a negative aspect of our city and turn it into a positive.
On Tuesday during the competition for The Edmonton Project, we saw both approaches at work.
This new competition worked to identify and will now work to build a popular new attraction for Edmonton. Five corporate partners (EllisDon, BDO, ATB, Kasian Architecture and zag creative), will partner with the winning entry, Gary and Amber Poliquin’s river valley gondola, and enlist all three levels of government to get the project built.
On Tuesday, the nine finalists made their pitch at a Dragons’ Den-like hearing.
Most competitors identified the city’s strengths, such as our downtown public squares and gorgeous river valley, and sought to build on them.
For example, sculptor Slavo Cech wanted to take advantage of Sir Winston Churchill Square. His idea was to have Edmontonians upload their own photos to a website, then have them curated and projected with an Imax camera onto Chancery Hall on the square.
Another idea was to create a “ferris meal” near the river valley, essentially a $3-millionto-$4-million 72-metre ferris wheel near the valley, where food trucks will serve you. You’d sit on heated ferris wheel cars to eat and enjoy the sights of the valley.
The winning plan is massively ambitious, to create a publicprivate partnership to build a gondola at a cost of $20 million to $60 million from Old Strathcona to downtown. The gondola was pitched as a cheap and green form of public transit that will take Edmontonians through the lovely valley, with a stop in Rossdale.
In another plan, Matthew Roper proposed building eight portable outdoor river valley shacks, which would be positioned between downtown and Hawrelak Park.
Yet another plan envisioned a $5-million makeover turning the former Rossdale Power Plant into a shipping container city, with businesses and restaurants moving into containers set up in and around the plant.
But the best and most interesting pitches focused on turning weaknesses into strengths. They were less grand than the cool-but-expensive gondola idea, but also more do-able — and I would have preferred one of them win, not that I had a vote.
For example, architect Gene Dub proposed a makeover of a major eyesore and underutilized part of downtown. There’s little but parking lots along 103 Avenue in the Quarters. Dub would like to see an outdoor market go there, built around a series of stacked shipping containers. These containers would act as billboards, where artists would put up murals, which would be ever-changing, bringing new life to the area.
Another transformational project came from Emma Sanborn, Alex Hindle, Kari Bazian and Ranon Soans with their idea of a sauna in the downtown river valley. This would cost $2.5 million to $3.5 million and would be built on city land near the river in Louise McKinney Riverfront Park.
The facility would have three saunas, with a total capacity for 70 people, as well as a bistro and an outdoor shower for those who want the thrilling hot-cold rush. The idea was to finally get the best of winter.
“We know to be a great city, we need to embrace winter,” Sanborn said.
“We can no longer stay inside from September to May. It’s boring and it’s not good for us ... We need to take back the winter and we think YegSauna is the hottest way to do it.”
Mayor Don Iveson closed the competition Tuesday night, telling the crowd he didn’t come with a cheque and a stamp of approval from council. He warned that as with any big project, there would be many hoops to jump through, such as environmental reviews, Indigenous consultation, community engagement and the funding question.
That said, Iveson was impressed with the number of brilliant ideas and said Edmontonians are looking for a spark, for the next thing.
“And here’s the best part, that we can have two or three or four of the good ideas that are coming along from the (High Level Line), to the riverwalk, to one of your ideas, two of your ideas,” he said.
“We are open for your creativity. It doesn’t mean we can make everything happen. But we’re going to try like hell.”
That’s encouraging from Iveson, but the onus is on all of us. If we can work together to turn some of these great ideas into reality, that will be a lasting contribution from this generation of Edmonton dreamers and builders.