Almost summer Headlines
Yeah, I splashed around. It was hot!
Hello Edmonton!
I have a confession. I’d never really been to the Alberta Legislature on a nice, sunny weekend. I finally made it there this weekend.
Wow.
I really didn’t know that it was such a fun place, with families and people splashing around in the pools. Good show. It was really cool to see the Legislature grounds turn into a busy park.
It also brought to my attention the amount of people who play, or practice, volleyball. That seems weird to me. But I’m told volleyball is quite big around these parts.
from the Edmonton Journal:
Gay cop honoured for notable ‘firsts’ (It is Pride week.)
The law that few want to practise (It’s family law.)
Let’s shout about mental illness (Take that, stigma.)
Injured soldier hopes for third tour
Insulation coming off for electricity prices (Ah, the deregulated market.)
Alberta’s own oil blowout disaster (Looking back at a big “spill” here.)
MLA pushes for online oil-well registry
Suspicious death in north Edmonton (Meanwhile…charges in the city’s last homicide…)
Movie Gallery closing most of its stores in Canada
Time capsule holds clunky artifacts, spot-on predictions (Where’s my flying car?)
And from the Calgary Herald: Province’s luxury car policy a bit of a clunker, critics say
from the Edmonton Sun:
Silent sirens initiative bugs some councillors (Councillor Jane Batty wants those darn, noisy emergency vehicle sirens to be quiet while she’s getting her beauty sleep.)
$36,000 statue commemorating dead homeless? (Surely we’ve spent money on worse ideas.)
Alberta special needs students to head back to regular classrooms
Alberta Liberals eye new tactics (Just a Liberal OR an NDP candidate running in some constituencies? It also looks like the governing Tories are looking at their tactics too.)
Wildrose’s Anderson jumps all over paint job for plane
‘Albertans want pension reform’: Labour leader
from Metro Edmonton:
Giving Edmontonians car-free options
from 630CHED/iNews880:
Public hearing about former gas station sites (They’re some of the worst looking plots of land in the city.)
Morley Scott’s first Eskimo broadcast
from CBC Edmonton:
Paul Band purges teaching staff
Listeria worry prompts Smith’s meat recall
Accessory charges stayed in Mountie’s death (The Mountie shot dead in Hay River, NWT by Emrah Bulatci.)
Const. testifies at fellow officer’s assault trial
from CTV Edmonton:
City councillor calls bar violence ‘an epidemic’ (The compliance team is talking about Whyte Avenue’s Iron Horse today.)
Men convicted of killing Mounties to appeal sentences
from CityTV Edmonton:
A “sinking” attraction (I bet that sinkhole is full of candy.)
That’s 11 months of headlines.
And we’ve been around (almost officially) one year. More to come…
A “Shell” of Itself
This old Shell station is being ripped up.
Who’s noticed the bulldozers ripping things up on Whyte Avenue at 100 Street?
We did. The disappearance of Platz Shell Service (9950 82 Avenue) was reported by the edmontonian one week ago. After closing up the station a final time, June 15, the Platz crew packed up the service side of things and headed over to the Ottewell neighbourhood…and that leaves a gas station to be disposed of.
Shirley Lowe, president of the Old Strathcona Business Association is waiting to see what’s going to happen to the site.
This lot at 105 and Whyte has been empty for a decade. (Thx JP!)
Whyte Avenue already has an empty lot. The contaminated Esso site at Whyte and 105 Street is now in its second decade of vacancy.
In an e-mail, Lowe says the fate of Whyte and 100 Street remains to be seen.
“How badly contaminated is this (Platz location) and does Shell care?”
“Is the remediation requirement a residential standard?” she asks. “If so, this can be rezoned.”
Underground fuel tanks need to be dug up.
The site remains under ownership of Shell Canada Limited, and there are no solid plans for the property.
Meanwhile, work has begun on removing the station’s underground fuel tanks.
Senior Communications Representative, Jackie Panera, tells the edmontonian they don’t know what the remedy for the abandoned gas station is.
“We are still determining the long-term future of the site and if we are going to sell the property,” Panera writes in an e-mail. “Since we have not determined what we are going to do long-term with the property, we don’t have timelines to share with you today on remediation plans.”
The Shell rep notes the company is monitoring its tanks for leakage during the removal process, as per Alberta Environment requirements.
So, just to recap: Shell is deciding whether they’ll build anew or sell the property. For the moment though, it looks like people living and visiting Old Strathcona may want to get used to looking at another empty lot.
Whyte Avenue’s Empty Lots
This lot at 99 and Whyte has been empty for a decade.
Since I first moved to Edmonton there’s been this big empty lot at the corner of 82 Avenue and 105 Street. It used to be a gas station.
The old gas tanks left a lot of contamination in the soil and so it continues to sit, the underground being cleaned by Imperial Oil (Esso), and will likely remain a fenced-in field for years to come. What an eyesore in the city’s showcase neighbourhood.
(For a thorough rundown check out this 2006 story from Vue Weekly.)
Former Platz Shell now a shell of itself.
Now a second gas station on Whyte Avenue is closed up and I dread a new empty lot will take its place. Platz Shell Service (9950 82 Avenue) has moved on. The crew picked up and headed up to the Ottewell neighbourhood.
A thought did strike me, however, as I pondered the other two gas stations on Whyte (an Esso at 99 Street and another at 109 Street). If the future is going to include more mass transit (and I think it should) and walkable neighbourhoods such as Old Strathcona, aren’t we going to see more empty lots where gas stations once sat?
Let’s hope they aren’t all as dirty as the one entering its second decade of decontamination.
Gone are the days of full service.
