Downtown Edmonton: An ever-changing landscape
I have to say that almost everyone has heard of the new addition to the downtown Edmonton – a new arena. However, there have been many changes to our downtown core that you might not have heard about.
Jim Taylor of the Downtown Business Association joined our club to share how there have been many unseen changes leading up to the most recent development of the arena. Jim has lived and worked downtown for more than 25 years now. In other words, Jim knows downtown very well.
For those Rotarians too young to vote at the time, Jim was one of our City Councilors in 1995. At that time, downtown businesses were closing and moving out of the core and vacancy rates were up [20% +]. In 1998, a capital city downtown plan kick-started change. To encourage new development / redevelopment, the City of Edmonton paid a developer $4,500 for every door they built [up to a1,000 units]. They maxed out immediately!
Since the 1998 inception of the housing grant and positive economy, there have been 60 major residential developments in downtown Edmonton. There has been the cumulative movement of office towers and warehouses being converted into residential homes. These conversions kick started the whole change downtown, but there was no visual change to downtown, because the conversion and redevelopment was in existing buildings.
Therefore, more people started calling the downtown core their home vs. just work area. To give an idea, the downtown core is only a 8 x 14 block area and the population tripled! With the increase of residential properties, business also picked up. Small retail businesses such as Starbucks came in and now we see larger ones, like Sobeys, and more corporate offices.
Downtown is now changing visually. Never mind the new arena, other developments are planned: the new EPCOR Building, the transformation of the Bay building to Enterprise Square [UofA], the Grant MacEwan expansion and now Norquest has confirmed funding to build its new home.
The City has been rebuilding infrastructure in the downtown core – just take a cruise down Jasper Ave [just kidding – trust me on the fact that there is lots of construction]. There will definitely be many more changes as Edmonton grows. Parking will always be a challenge, expensive and problematic. We as Edmontonians may have to look at downtown core commuting a little differently: shuttles, bus, Park ‘n Ride, LRT or are willing to spend $30 for two hours of parking.