David Staples: Better to go slow and get Blatchford right
DAVID STAPLES, EDMONTON JOURNAL
There’s been no end of complaining that the fantastic vision to build a greentopia neighbourhood on the old Blatchford airport lands has been gutted and disrespected, but that’s not how Kim Krushell sees it.
Krushell, a former city councillor now running a tech startup company, sits on Blatchford redevelopment’s business advisory group. It regularly goes over proposals for city-led projects and gives city administrators hell whenever it sees something that doesn’t make sense.
Krushell dearly wants to see Blatchford succeed. She was a key figure in voting to shut and redevelop the old airport. But she’s not worried it’s taking so long to proceed. “I’d rather have delay and get it right than rush to do something and get it wrong,” she says.
If there was one mistake with the project, it’s that council was far too optimistic at the start, says Krushell. “I was naive. When we first started looking at this I thought there were all these new technologies out there and you just had to go pick them, and it turns out it’s not quite the way I thought it was … It’s not that simple.”
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