TOWER WILL ENHANCE, PROTECT RIVER VALLEY
Decision should not be shaped by emotions and short-term thinking, writes Ken Cantor
I enjoyed the opinion piece by Alice Major on the Alldritt Tower. I share much of her vision for a city we love, but I disagree with her conclusions.
Alice noted council is considering the sale of a small area of parkland, a steep slope of brush. It is also inaccessible, unusable and invisibly sandwiched between Jasper Avenue and a retaining wall on Grierson Hill. Despite this, she considers it to be all the more precious because of what the city took away for Hall D.
Anyone looking at the Quarters Hotel and Residences plans would see a proposal exactly the opposite of what we inherited with Hall D, protecting and enhancing our views while providing public access and potential connections to Louise McKinney Park that won’t otherwise be achieved. It will enhance, not eliminate, our sense of the river valley and our relation to it.
From Ada Boulevard to River Valley Road — from Devon to Fort Saskatchewan — our connections to the North Saskatchewan River are greater and more accessible than the Thames, a waterway that is urban to the edge of both banks from one end of London to the other.
Comparing a single block of Jasper Avenue to Vancouver’s Stanley Park Drive is equally disingenuous by invoking wonderful but inaccurate imagery. Comparing it to Georgia or Hastings or Cordova would be more accurate — streets utilizing private and public lands to provide public views and access.
Alice noted our disconnect from the river, but that’s not all from a lack of vantage points. That comes from vantage points without access and others where we give up water for the backside of 42-inch concrete jersey barriers added to the Dawson and Low Level bridges and Rowland and Grierson Hill roads, imposing that disconnect wherever they are dropped.
River valley views of downtown already include structures built atop the bank dating back to the Hotel Macdonald more than a century ago. Buildings built since are all an integral part of that view and all built on the same underlying geology as everything else downtown, including highrise towers stretching to the new arena.
This snapshot of who we are isn’t the same as it was a century ago and it won’t be the same a century from now, but if those changes are implemented with sensitive planning and design decisions — and I believe this proposal reflects that — photos will still be taken to places around the world, from Australia to Scotland.
This viewpoint might have been protected by the Quarters Plan but it is not the proposed Urban Balcony referenced in that plan. It would be more accurate to note this proposal as enabling the development of the plan’s Urban Balcony for public use, not depriving us of it.
The Quarters Plan was painstakingly developed through research and broad public consultation, but in turn, it also replaced statutory plans that were equally painstakingly developed by the city.
This discussion is the next step in the ongoing planning process, much the same as creating the amendments that enabled the new Hyatt Place hotel and much the same as those needed to approve a new ArtsHab building three times as tall as previously contemplated.
Hyatt Place has already earned a prominent place in the hearts of Edmontonians, the ArtsHab will hopefully achieve the same status and the Quarters Hotel and Residences should be afforded the same opportunity.
These discussions don’t reflect impatience, but an ongoing objective review of what constitutes good planning policy and implementation. They should not be surrendering to shortterm emotional reactions.
This sale will indeed be irreversible but it will result in more generous and accessible access to views above and below than we could achieve otherwise. Is it council’s role to be sure that is the case? On that, Alice and I agree, but it will be approving this project that is the most prudent way to accomplish that.
This sale will result in more generous access to views ... than we could achieve otherwise