August 25 Edmonton Headlines
Good morning, Edmonton! Quite the busy day here, so let’s get right to things.
There’s a double-edged effect to revitalizing a business zone. Owners can charge more for rent and smaller, local, business can’t always afford to rent, and you get left with chain stores that sap the area of character. Building and property owners need to take more responsibility if they want to be part of character neighbourhoods, heritage districts, and promote local industries.
When if the downtown arena gets built I wonder what the spin-off costs to the City of Edmonton (and you and me as taxpayers) might be with Rexall Place and Northlands. There are costs there that are not part of the proposed $450-million arena pricetag.
Speaking of the downtown arena…it’s kind of tied into the entire downtown plan now. So, I guess, you either like the downtown arena getting a bunch of government cash or you hate downtown Edmonton.
Edmonton’s got the shortest commute (by a few minutes) in Canada’s largest cities. Startling: 85% of drivers have never stepped on a bus, streetcar, or train to get to work. That seems an almost impossible number to believe. People taking transit to work are riding buses and the like for about 44 minutes, compared to the Edmonton drive time of 23 minutes. BUT! Drivers are far more cranky about their commute.
Speaking of commuting to work…It was not your imagination, the Whitemud was worse than usual Wednesday morning.
Now that you’ve commuted to your office, let’s keep going. (more…)
Explore Edmonton
Today’s event selection is not really one you could accomplish (in its entirety) in one evening, or even one full day.
You may remember me talking about the Edmonton Community Challenge (put on by the Next Gen committee and Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues) back in June.
Our scrappy little team from Strathcona Centre placed a respectable fifth, notable due to our handful of active members. While we were darn proud to have collected the most food for the Edmonton Food Bank in the sculpture challenge (King Edward School gets a lot of the credit) I think it’s safe to say the core of our team had the most fun in the city-wide photo scavenger hunt.
By checking Flickr, I would say the other top teams also had a blast with this.
We had to run all over Edmonton, taking photos of ourselves in front of historically significant buildings, on bridges, shopping in all of the Business Revitalization Zones (BRZ), spending time in our favourite parks and local haunts, high-fiving councillors, and hitting up each branch of the Edmonton Public Library.
I learned that Edmonton has WAY more bridges than one could get to in a day, or even a week. Especially if you start counting footbridges. The libraries are spread out, and it took many hours to get to all of them (the EPL Go at the University of Alberta is also the cutest little library).
Somehow we completed every task on the photo scavenger hunt, even getting to the whale at West Edmonton Mall before it was removed for the opening of Victoria’s Secret. (There may be an item or two you can’t do right now.)
Living in one of the city’s oldest, most vibrant, neighbourhoods sure helped too. Strathcona has plenty of historically recognized buildings, it’s a BRZ right now, has any type of business needed for the photo challenge, a library branch, giant trees, and plenty of people to start a parade.
Prior to this challenge, I had never been to a bottle depot. I feel more like an Edmontonian now.
So today I offer you a chance to explore Edmonton like you probably haven’t before. Take a scan through the scavenger hunt from the Edmonton Community Challenge and choose a few items to track down, or try, before the summer is out.
I bet, just like I discovered how historically significant my work neighbourhood is, you find out a few things about Edmonton you didn’t know.
(It’s a lot of fun to see how many U of A bunnies you can get into one picture. Those suckers are fast.)
Let me know if you do any of these, or have photos of them already. You can always toss them into our Flickr pool too.
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Keep in mind you should play safe and not break any laws. Also “team” is you.
Here’s what you could do: (more…)
