Northlands call decried as ‘flippant’

Request said to obligate firms to give away intellectual property

Edmonton wants to hear big ideas for how to redevelop the Northlands site but one longtime member of the community is warning the approach by officials has likely limited what they’ll hear.

Ken Cantor said he was really excited by Edmonton’s public call this spring for ideas for the exhibition lands. Then he read it.

“It’s almost as if it was written not to solicit good ideas but to preclude big ideas,” said Cantor, who had been working with several other firms on a proposal to repurpose the Coliseum as a mega convention centre.

City council wanted a public call for ideas to test what the market believes is feasible for the site.

It voted 7-6 in March to make the Coliseum building itself offlimits. But the wording in the request for proposals didn’t make that final.

It asked for concept-level proposals, financial models and market assumptions but said any ideas submitted through the request became “the property of the city” to be used or adapted, even without “acknowledgment or recognition.” That’s according to the text of the request for expressions of interest posted in early April on the Alberta Purchasing Connection website.

“It’s a pretty flippant and disrespectful attitude,” Cantor said.

It obligates professional firms to give away intellectual property rights for architectural designs and funding ideas. His design partners pulled out.

What Cantor eventually submitted had only a vague description of what the team believes possible. The call for ideas closed May 4. In an interview Friday, city officials said they need that ownership in order ensure they can freely discuss all ideas with council and the neighbouring communities as they consult on a new area redevelopment plan.

That’s why this isn’t a normal call, said Lyall Brenneis, who is leading the city’s redevelopment team. It doesn’t necessarily lead to a process of qualification and then proposals. “It’s really about ideas generation.”

The team received 12 ideas through the formal request for expressions of interest, more than 50 through a more informal online-portal set up for the public and 90 unsolicited ideas previously.

“We haven’t precluded anyone from participating,” said senior planner Michelle Ouellette. If someone says the city already knows what it wants to do and is just going through the motions of asking, that’s just “incorrect, on so many levels.”

These ideas will be analyzed and presented to council before summer. The team is also organizing another public open house to share next steps with the public June 21.

You can do it all with private funding. There are lots of P3 models and quasi-P3 models that work.

Brenneis said the team will present to council ideas that involve redeveloping the Coliseum despite council’s vote to “permanently close” the building.

At least one other project team is pushing for reuse, not demolition. Team Agora Borealis says it should be converted into senior and student housing, with skylights in the roof and a large climate controlled atrium.

That would make it the cornerstone of a new, mixed-use development north of 118 Avenue.

It’s still unclear if demolition can be avoided under the new agreement with the Katz Group. During the debate, one councillor suggested reuse might need Katz Group permission.

Cantor, president of Primavera Development Group, said he still hopes the Coliseum can be saved because it’s still a strong building with large spans that could be adapted for many uses.

His pitch would see the Expo Centre and Coliseum connected through a hotel concourse above 118 Avenue, creating the rare ability for Edmonton to bid on mega conferences. The Coliseum bowl could be cut back and reconfigured to accommodate up to 10,000 conference attendees for a keynote speaker.

Outside, residential development would start at the south end of the site, near Borden Park, and the space in between it and the Expo Centre would be used for KDays, other festivals or for large displays — the John Deere combines during the Canadian dealership convention, for example.

“You can do it all with private funding. There are lots of P3 models and quasi-P3 models that work,” said Cantor. But he feels he never got the chance to pitch that vision in any serious way.

“That was the frustrating part. Everyone who was looking at the Coliseum for any purpose just got cut off at the knees.”