Gibbons fuming over latest snag on Energy Park
Councillor vents his frustration at city brass
Coun. Ed Gibbons is a hustler, a doer, a determined Edmonton booster and an old minor hockey guy.
He evidently took all those messages about team play seriously. He can carve his enemies in private just fine, but in public he’s not usually one to constantly question or call out his teammates, including Edmonton’s city managers.
That’s why I shot to full attention at Wednesday’s council meeting when Gibbons forcefully disapproved of the work done on the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park by city manager Simon Farbrother and his underlings.
Gibbons talked about how disappointed he was with city administration’s poor support of this major project, and he was no less critical Thursday morning when asked to detail his beef.
“I’ve worked hard on this and that’s what I was so frustrated about,” he said. “You fight tooth and nail and it seems like you can’t even get your foot in the door.”
The massive park, to be built on 49 square kilometres of marginal farm land north of the Manning Drive, is to be a centre for manufacturing, research and development, transportation and petrochemicals. It’s designed to be the second largest such industrial park in the world and it’s hoped it will be our slice of the lucrative Heartland industrial complex of refineries and plants northeast of the city.
Right now, Edmonton has little industry and collects little industrial tax. The Edmonton region generates approximately $150 million from industrial taxes each year, but four sparsely populated rural counties rake in 70 per cent of that money, while numerous cash poor towns and Edmonton itself get just 30 per cent.
To stay afloat and competitive, Edmonton has got to get going with industry, and not do as we did in the past, which was to shoo away heavy industry as some grubby, smelly, unsightly mess that didn’t align with our delicate cityfolk sensibilities.
Gibbons has pushed for years to get the Energy Park going and convinced two mayors, Stephen Mandel and Don Iveson, and his council mates to support him.
On Wednesday, Ive son congratulated Gibbons and city administrators on solving one stumbling block, which was getting the region’s towns and counties to agree to sell Epcor the main water line in the area so that new Energy Park businesses can get water.
It took 18 years to put that deal together, Gibbons said, mainly because surrounding towns weren’t keen to hand over the line and see Edmonton’s park move ahead.
“That’s how they can control this land and not have it developed.”
So what’s the problem now?
For Energy Park to take off, it needs proper road access. Big trucks need to easily and safely enter the park.
In the short term, simply for safety’s sake, there need to be traffic lights at the Manning Drive/Meridian St. intersection. Next, so traffic can flow freely, a $100-plus million exchange is in order there.
“My first quest is getting that damn thing built in the next five years,” Gibbons said.
The province controls Manning Drive, so Rachel Notley’s NDP must approve the traffic lights and pay for the exchange, but the city must make it a major funding priority.
Gibbons got upset with city managers when he saw they had bumped down this interchange to be a low priority.
“I can’t believe how far this fell off the rails,” he said. “I was just really disappointed that it’s gone nowhere.”
Council’s main contact with city administration is Farbrother.
“All he worries about is soccer right now,” Gibbons said of Farbrother and the FIFA Women’s World Cup. “It’s so frustrating.”
Gibbons said it’s not his way to go public with criticism. “I’m not an attacker. I’m a worker. I’m ‘let’s work together.’” So why go public? “I’m doing it because he’s the city manager and something has fallen between the cracks. I can’t go and bawl out (transportation manager) Dorian (Wandzura). Somebody should be.”
Farbrother declined to comment.
For their part, the mayor, Farbrother and civic administration support the Energy Park plan, but Iveson is also encouraging Gibbons to get the Manning-Meridian exchange moved back up the priority list.
“I think we need to continue to talk about how this technology park moves ahead and gets the right pushes at the right time so that we can participate in economic development in whatever happens over time in the industrial Heartland,” Iveson said.
Bottom line: Edmonton needs industrial taxes to thrive. Administration had best get cracking and make Ed Gibbons’s quest their quest as well.