Downtown is looking livelier, but also shoddier than it should
Paula Simons, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Last January, I made a bold prediction on this page. I declared that 2005 had been the tipping point for Edmonton's ugly duckling downtown, that 2006 would be the year that our city centre really took off again.
How did my prediction work out? Well, let's call 2006 a mixed bag.
In the plus column?
Work is going great guns on several multimillion-dollar projects, including the Robbins Health Learning Centre on the downtown Grant MacEwan campus, the new Don Wheaton Family YMCA and the Icon condominium complex on 104th Street, which promises to be the largest residential development the downtown has yet seen.
The University of Alberta's total make-over of the old Bay building, complete with a new fourth storey, is well on its way. Hall D, the addition to the Shaw Conference Centre, opened for business. The Art Gallery of Alberta is just about to begin its ambitious renovations. Sobeys has announced firm plans for an upscale boutique grocery store on Jasper Avenue and 104th Street. And anyone who did a little Christmas or Boxing Day shopping downtown this season, anyone who took in a downtown Christmas concert or play or ballet, could see with their own eyes that the city centre is once more becoming a magnet for people.
On the other side of the ledger?
NorQuest College, which has been looking for provincial money to fund the expansion of its downtown campus, has still not been given funding to go ahead. Lyle Oberg's grand plan to remake the legislature precinct by tearing down the ugly old Terrace Building and reopening the elegant Federal Building, was suspended during the Tory's provincial leadership race. Although there have been fresh rumblings and rumours about a new office tower downtown, we've yet to see a start on anything real. The former CN Station Lands, north of City Hall, still sit vacant, despite a lot of public wishful thinking about a new hockey arena on the site.
Meanwhile, inflation, juiced by the superheated local economy, has driven construction costs to the stratosphere. It's not just harder to pay for a downtown construction project, it's harder to find anyone to build one.
Neither private developers nor government funders are as keen to build when costs are peaking. The problem is, nobody's sure whether this is a temporary price spike and labour shortage or whether it's only going to get steadily harder and more expensive to build as the decade ends.
So where does that leave us?
With a downtown full of promise. But also a downtown filled with too much garbage and too many ugly parking lots. Yes, there are many fantastic projects underway. But streets and sidewalks are still strewn with trash -- coffee cups, cigarette butts, old pizza boxes, flyers and heaven knows what else.
Inspired by Mayor Stephen Mandel's personal clean-up campaign, I started picking up the crap as I walked into work. It's not a pleasant job or an easy one. It's one thing to pick up the trash. It's another to figure out where to put it. The few public garbage cans you find downtown are often overflowing. Some days, I have to take the stuff I've picked up into the Journal building just to dispose of it. The problem is particularly acute near bus stops. People stand waiting for the bus, smoking or drinking coffee. When the bus comes, they dump their butts and cups and leave the mess behind. It's not rocket science, folks. For starters, we need more downtown garbage cans and cigarette receptacles. We can't legislate better manners -- but at least we could make it less tempting for people to be slobs. Maybe if the downtown had less litter, it would feel less socially acceptable for the next person to add their garbage to the streets.
And don't even get me started on those gravel-and-sand-strewn surface parking lots, about a hundred of which blight our downtown core. Muddy when it's wet, dusty when it's dry, they are eyesores that make our city core look perpetually run down, no matter how many shiny new projects surround them. The city's been talking for more than a year now about cracking down, about enforcing its existing rules to force lot owners to tidy up. But it's hard to detect a lot of improvement.
The moral of this story? We can't just wait for a lot of big, shiny mega projects like galleries, towers and arenas to fix our downtown. We all have to take responsibility, on a smaller, more personal level, for the state of our city's foremost public space. It's time for us to stop accepting a bargain-basement downtown. It's time for us to take pride in our rejuvenating city centre, time for us to start demanding the highest standards -- not just of city council or downtown merchants or parking lot operators -- but of ourselves.
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We where entertaining some people from Orange county California over the christmas season, they were amazed at the size of our city and downtown. We had to take them to the LA RONDE For some great views.....and food. Happy new year...may it be healthy and prosperous for all.
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