Is Edmonton's Downtown too big? Size matters, experts say

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The heart of Alberta’s capital could benefit from demolition amid overdevelopment, heard a crowd at the Edmonton Downtown Business Association’s (EDBA) panel on the future of the city’s core.

After touring Edmonton’s Downtown for three hours earlier this week, ‘Imagining Downtown’ panelists hosted Thursday by EDBA were asked to provide the audience of business leaders, city officials, and government representatives with an honest assessment for what is going well in the core, what needs improving, and how this municipality compares to others. The following are some of the highlights from the discussion.

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Downtown Edmonton too big?

The size of Edmonton’s Downtown core is a reflection of ambition from decades past, but now its size is also its problem.

The once ambitious vision of having a vibrant Downtown spanning from 97 Street to 111 Street has become impractical, explained EDBA head, Puneeta McBryan.

“What the decades and decades have shown us is that you can’t have a thriving and vibrant downtown core that is that big,” said McBryan.

The effect of the city-centre sprawl is a lack of focused density, which managing director for public non-profit solutions at Streetsense, and one of the event’s panelists, Larisa Ortiz, said prevents the city from having an effective “mousetrap” to keep people Downtown.

Ortiz said the city has “wonderful little gems” but that they are “spread out a little too far.”

With large swaths of vacant retail spaces, like City Centre Mall, Ortiz recalled a quote from a developer in the United States who said “we’re not overbuilt, we’re under-demolished.”

“You probably have 300,000 square feet that you have to demolish,” said Ortiz to reporters after the panel discussion, adding “that’s a very painful message, but that’s not a message that is uncommon.”

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Reallocation of the pie

With a higher-than-average office vacancy rate, at roughly 21.4 per cent according to CBRE, Edmonton needs to introduce more housing into the city’s core, the crowd heard.

“What if we were to look at the Downtown customer base as a pie? You know, if the office worker is a shrinking portion of the pie. The growing piece of the pie should be your residents,” said Ortiz.

Downtown Edmonton’s current population, in a recently released Downtown Investment Plan, is an estimated 13,000. Panelist David Downey, president and CEO of the International Downtown Association, said the goal for housing in Downtown Edmonton ought to be ambitious if it is going to make up for the office vacancies while expanding vibrancy.

“I look at the scale of this Downtown, and I’m thinking 60-, 70-, 80,000 residents. That’s what we’re driving towards,” he said.

Can’t wait for governments

Sourcing funding for housing in the city’s core is not simple, however. “You have to figure out how to crack that nut, because downtown isn’t going to survive or thrive the way we want it to without it,” Ortiz said.

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McBryan noted that the federal government has put up billions of dollars for a housing accelerator fund across the country. In Winnipeg and Calgary, some of those funds were put into their downtowns, whereas Edmonton so far has not, she said.

But it was panelist and Brookfield Residential’s president of Canada Land and Housing, Trent Edwards’ final comment on housing funding that resonated, leaving the crowd silent. He emphasized the importance of creating a public-private investment strategy without government help first.

“Make sure the strategy works, that we can solve this ourselves, and then look for the province and feds through different forms of funding and grants to help accelerate that strategy. But don’t rely on that to actually be the strategy,” said Edwards.

“I don’t know if you know how much we needed to hear that,” responded McBryan.

What is thriving?

Edmonton’s Downtown has its gems.

“There’s actually been a lot done here,” said Edwards.

Citing big investment areas like the Ice District, Rice Howard Way, and the Arts District, panelists gave Edmonton a nod for providing residents and visitors with a wide variety of ways to spend their time, and money, in the heart of the city.

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Core post-secondary institutions including MacEwan University and NorQuest College contribute additional assets and vibrancy, something other municipalities strive for, added Edwards.

“The opportunity that comes with that is amazing,” he said.

Like Milwaukee? Or Fort Worth?

“To me, it doesn’t sound awesome, but Milwaukee,” added Edwards.

Like Edmonton, the U.S. city of Milwaukee, Wis., has post-secondary institutions downtown, an arena, and a river valley that offers opportunities for activation. But the similarities with that American city on the edge of Lake Michigan’s western shore aren’t all positive.

He said Milwaukee is also grappling with trying to pump more life into its downtown.

Meanwhile, Downey said Edmonton is comparable to Fort Worth, Texas. Like Edmonton, that city in north-central Texas is also largely dependent on personal vehicles and has a proportionally low amount of people living in its core, which has caused a sprawl in the business and residential community.

“They know it’s a slippery slope … that if you kind of lose sight of the priority of the core, you’re never going to get it back,” said Downey.

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zdelaney@postmedia.com

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