Let’s Talk Brand & Reputation

[Coldrsx]

Is this the 'quality' of landscaping for Downtown stations?

[itom 987]

Perhaps I should start a company that would fill in those planters.

[Coldrsx]

I noticed that City forces were planting all of the large planters around ECC this morning; it begs the question(s), why would these not be for ECC to do and why were they left looking awful during the playoff run and not planted until the end of June? Odd.

[Coldrsx]

[Coldrsx]

Calgary announcing what, their 8th, 9th, 10th???? new Downtown/central hotels today with a 69 storey W and 62 storey JW.

The gap widens.

How will we respond?

[ExcaliburKid]

Clearly whatever group is responsible for selling the downtown to these type of brands is either failing or isn't really out there trying. Even Holiday Inn can't be convinced
Got no answers for you Cold, where would you start? If the demand is there, why isn't someone jumping all over this?

[Coldrsx]

Increase demand, build a greater corporate sector, make Downtown a cleaner/safer/more inviting destination.

[YegFan]

^it's a chicken and egg game...You need more hotels to get big events, but you won't increase demand if you don't build. Corporate base in Edmonton has not increased much in 30 years downtown.

At this point, Edmonton is so far behind that it will never catch up to Calgary in 500 years.

Lat year we tried to convince a committee in an industry that we are part of that is planning a conference to come to Edmonton...They said yes we should come to Alberta but chose Calgary (700 delegates!!!). They said...oh...not sure about Edmonton. Calgary is better.

I think these conversations happen every day. And our civic leaders are completely not in touch with reality.

[Rocket252]

^ This city is so far behind our civic leaders have no idea how to begin and frankly I don't either.

We need to worry about falling behind the class 2 cities like Winnipeg and Halifax

[JSS1974]

Edmonton is way too far behind to ever catch up to Calgary.
At this rate, Calgary will likely become the second biggest regional city after Toronto.
The momentum in Calgary is way too strong.
They have geographical advantages, a true international airport, LRT spanning throughout the city, and the head offices and regional offices. Stampede is well known, their downtown is cleaner and more organized and safer.

And what does Edmonton have? A large public sector workforce, which is not nimble enough to make timely decisions - a committee to study everything.

It's too late and the horse has left the barn. If Edmonton wanted to do something, it would have happened years ago. Even the regions outside of Edmonton - Leduc, Strathcona County, Acheson, etc - are attracting more business than Edmonton. Was in St Albert a week ago, and man it looks clean and organized. Even their buildings look better than here.

[YegFan]

Originally Posted by Rocket252

^ This city is so far behind our civic leaders have no idea how to begin and frankly I don't either.

We need to worry about falling behind the class 2 cities like Winnipeg and Halifax

I'll take Halifax anytime. At least their airport provides real international connections, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zurich, Barcelona,etc..

[Slide]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

The gap widens.

How will we respond?

with more 6-storey stick frames downtown

Originally Posted by YegFan

Lat year we tried to convince a committee in an industry that we are part of that is planning a conference to come to Edmonton...They said yes we should come to Alberta but chose Calgary (700 delegates!!!). They said...oh...not sure about Edmonton. Calgary is better.

I think these conversations happen every day. And our civic leaders are completely not in touch with reality.

Yes, this happens way more often than i would've guessed.

Originally Posted by Rocket252

^ This city is so far behind our civic leaders have no idea how to begin and frankly I don't either.

We need to worry about falling behind the class 2 cities like Winnipeg and Halifax

The caliber of many private projects in those cities vs what we get out here would tell me we already are falling behind both of them. Where Edmonton maintains its edge is in its high population. The fact that Edmonton's population has maintained not far behind Calgary's for so long is actually impressive. You would assume the gap to be much larger.

It shouldn't take multiple generations to have a clean, presentable downtown. Yet we still arent there. The effect of the arena on downtown to spur development unfortunately plateaued a lot faster than expected. Not sure what can turn things around

[Rocket252]

^ As far as population we have a lot of new Canadians moving here because of jobs and lower cost but we are losing a lot of established people mostly young professionals to Calgary Vancouver etc. Not a lot stay. Personally I know so many that have moved to Calgary. It would be interesting to see the stats.

[ciudad_del_norte]

Yeesh haha. This thread should really be called "let's have a pity party".

[Rocket252]

^ reality sucks.

[Coldrsx]

When does this happen in Edmonton?

[YegFan]

Originally Posted by Rocket252

^ As far as population we have a lot of new Canadians moving here because of jobs and lower cost but we are losing a lot of established people mostly young professionals to Calgary Vancouver etc. Not a lot stay. Personally I know so many that have moved to Calgary. It would be interesting to see the stats.

Exactly....very difficult to convince professionals (white collars) to move here. But you need the jobs and big employers to entice them. Downtown jobs are mostly small(ish) companies that rely on local talent and when they grow, they leave.

Look at AIMCO, they hire in Toronto because the investment professionals would not come here.

[ExcaliburKid]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

When does this happen in Edmonton?

Probably would be happening, but apparently the name "Klondike Days" wasn't modern enough for the geniuses running the show. So now our summer festival is an identity-less generic joke, the history deleted and forgotten by the younger generation. Can't rewind that

Calgary meanwhile promoted the living daylights out of the Stampede and now it's a well known summer tradition that has become a destination

Edmonton used to have vision, then pushed the self destruct button in the early 90's and hasn't stopped getting in it's own way since

[Hallsy's Toupee]

Originally Posted by ciudad_del_norte

Yeesh haha. This thread should really be called "let's have a pity party".

This should be called The Jan Brady Thread!



The ones who consistently obsess over our southern neighbor (likely because of some misguided desire to live there) will appreciate this.

Oh hi, Coldrsx!

[ExcaliburKid]

Chiming in with meme's and complaining that we complain too much about Edmonton's short-comings? If the topic isn't of interest, then don't comment

Imagine if council had the same desire for things to change like Cold does? This thread wouldn't exist