Railway overpass to be reborn as ‘living bridge’ on 97th Street
A former CN overpass that was once a vital link across 97th Street to Edmonton’s downtown rail yards is about to bloom again as an important community connection.
Three Edmonton designers and artists plan to turn the landmark into a “living bridge” by creating a garden from a gravel-strewn concrete pedestrian walkway.
“You get up on the bridge and you’re almost invisible, but you can see everything,” says Chelsea Boos, who’s organizing the project along with Carmen Douville and Erin Ross.
The trio and up to 50 volunteers will use rolled straw-filled sacking next weekend to build 25 circular raised beds over 97th Street near 105th Avenue, planting flowers, grasses, vines and shrubs.
Boos calls it part of a grassroots movement to improve city life.
One local example is the Alley of Light, a normally dark pocket park on 104th Street that has been lit by artistic installations and opera productions, she says.
Like her fellow co-ordinators, Boos enjoys getting her hands into the earth. She has a vegetable patch and ornamental garden at her Alberta Avenue home.
“Our intention was to encourage that use in a space that’s been very neglected and turn it into a public garden.”
The women were inspired by programs that turn old elevated rail lines into downtown parks in such centres as New York and Paris.
They’d like to put in edible crops such as highbush cranberries and saskatoons which visitors could pick for themselves, and want the area to be a gathering place with mural painting, a Chinese harvest dinner and other events.
“We want to improve food security in the city as well as just providing a better place for people to enjoy and relax.”
They have commitments for $12,000 in grants from the Edmonton Community Foundation and the Stollery Charitable Foundation, and numerous offers to help maintain the space from eager volunteers.
The span is owned by Qualico, which has allowed the group to go ahead with the project for at least this year while it works on plans for the former rail lands from 97th Street to 101st Street.
“That’s the last railroad bridge we have downtown. We don’t respect our history too much … We sometimes look at it as a negative,” says Ken Cantor, the company’s vice-president of commercial development.
“I think having something like this happen on it probably puts the structure in a different light … The more that we assist in reclaiming public/urban space, the better we feel about the space.”
Qualico intends to keep a pedestrian and bicycle crossing over the road as part of any future redevelopment, although it might tear down the existing bridge and put up something new, Cantor says.
A similar temporary garden was created in an empty lot on 96th Street last summer as part of the Dirt City: Dream City public art exhibition, for which Boos was the project manager.
“With Dirt City, people took pride in it ... There was no vandalism whatsoever ... If we can recreate it, that’s my dream.”