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Downtown

Keith Gerein has written about it twice and I'm looking forward to hearing what's in the works with the city, province and OEG in terms of an upcoming (project?) announcement for downtown.

Hopefully will be announced soon.
 
TAS said:
Keith Gerein has written about it twice and I'm looking forward to hearing what's in the works with the city, province and OEG in terms of an upcoming (project?) announcement for downtown.

Hopefully will be announced soon.
Click to expand...
Pardon? :oops:
 
So if the province does come through and covers the $35 million Coliseum demolition among other things, what would people like the city to do with $35 million the city has already set aside in the budget?

- reduce city tax increase?
- incentives for downtown condo projects (new and conversion)?
- more affordable housing?
- public transportation?
- add some money to warehouse park for a fountain and more amenities?
- add to road and snow clearing budget?
- add to park maintenance?
- or what?

I think I would like to spend a good portion of it on the downtown pedestrian bridge council had to cut in last year's tough budget decisions. Cost then was $21 million, I believe. I want this bridge.

Screenshot_20240716_140232_Samsung Internet.jpg


edmonton.ctvnews.ca

City designs new pedestrian bridge downtown

The proposed bridge would be located at McDougall Hill Road and 100 Street, and connect a future MacDonald Drive Promenade to the Funicular Upper Plaza.
edmonton.ctvnews.ca edmonton.ctvnews.ca
 
TAS said:
So if the province does come through and covers the $35 million Coliseum demolition among other things, what would people like the city to do with $35 million the city has already set aside in the budget?

- reduce city tax increase?
- incentives for downtown condo projects (new and conversion)?
- more affordable housing?
- public transportation?
- add some money to warehouse park for a fountain and more amenities?
- add to road and snow clearing budget?
- add to park maintenance?
- or what?

I think I would like to spend a good portion of it on the downtown pedestrian bridge council had to cut in last year's tough budget decisions. Cost then was $21 million, I believe. I want this bridge.
Click to expand...

Warehouse Park fountain and 100 St pedestrian bridge please!
👍
 
Last edited:
TAS said:
So if the province does come through and covers the $35 million Coliseum demolition among other things, what would people like the city to do with $35 million the city has already set aside in the budget?

- reduce city tax increase?
- incentives for downtown condo projects (new and conversion)?
- more affordable housing?
- public transportation?
- add some money to warehouse park for a fountain and more amenities?
- add to road and snow clearing budget?
- add to park maintenance?
- or what?

I think I would like to spend a good portion of it on the downtown pedestrian bridge council had to cut in last year's tough budget decisions. Cost then was $21 million, I believe. I want this bridge.

View attachment 580920

edmonton.ctvnews.ca

City designs new pedestrian bridge downtown

The proposed bridge would be located at McDougall Hill Road and 100 Street, and connect a future MacDonald Drive Promenade to the Funicular Upper Plaza.
edmonton.ctvnews.ca edmonton.ctvnews.ca
Click to expand...
This would be a massive Instagram photo destination and visitor draw so this has my vote too.
 
TAS said:
So if the province does come through and covers the $35 million Coliseum demolition among other things, what would people like the city to do with $35 million the city has already set aside in the budget?

- reduce city tax increase?
- incentives for downtown condo projects (new and conversion)?
- more affordable housing?
- public transportation?
- add some money to warehouse park for a fountain and more amenities?
- add to road and snow clearing budget?
- add to park maintenance?
- or what?

I think I would like to spend a good portion of it on the downtown pedestrian bridge council had to cut in last year's tough budget decisions. Cost then was $21 million, I believe. I want this bridge.

View attachment 580920

edmonton.ctvnews.ca

City designs new pedestrian bridge downtown

The proposed bridge would be located at McDougall Hill Road and 100 Street, and connect a future MacDonald Drive Promenade to the Funicular Upper Plaza.
edmonton.ctvnews.ca edmonton.ctvnews.ca
Click to expand...
Personally, I'd take the money and do a long-term fix to that horribly lumpy road.
 

I'm not sure if this has been posted but I did just stumble on the official results of the Edmonton Business Census for O'Day-min. A total of 105,391 jobs are located in the ward. Around 1/6th of the employed labour force in the city.

1721335774025.png


The chart shows the relative sizes of different sectors within the pilot area’s business landscape. These sectors - accommodation and food services (12%), retail trade (14%), real estate and rental and leasing (16%) - made up 42% of the business establishments in the pilot area. This sectoral breakdown can serve as a foundation for understanding potential focus areas for strategic development (e.g. emerging clusters) and resource allocation.
Click to expand...

1721335809911.png

The pilot project counted 105,391 jobs provided by business establishments within Ward O'day-min. Respondents reported approximately 79% of jobs as full-time positions and 21% as part-time. The following chart illustrates the distribution of employment across various sectors in the ward.
This tells us Ward O'day-min contains approximately 1/6th of Edmonton's total employed labour force (when compared to Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey from the same time period)
Click to expand...
  • These sectors made up the majority (about 60%) of Ward O’day-min job share: accommodation & food services (7%), professional, scientific and technical services (10%) and public administration (42%).
    • Though Real estate and rental and leasing has the most number of establishments, it accounted for only 4% of total jobs in the area. Similarly, Retail Trade has the second most number of establishments and only accounted for 6% of jobs in the area.
    • Employment in the ward is clustered in the Downtown core, 124 Street and Kingsway Mall.
Click to expand...
1721335947904.png
 
Kalen Andersen on Edify’s new podcast said 10% of the labour force is downtown. But 1/6 is almost double that… Anyone know what the discrepancy might be?
 
Kosy123 said:

I'm not sure if this has been posted but I did just stumble on the official results of the Edmonton Business Census for O'Day-min. A total of 105,391 jobs are located in the ward. Around 1/6th of the employed labour force in the city.

View attachment 581464



View attachment 581467


View attachment 581468
Click to expand...
Yikes, I know many of us known the above but the data really highlights what we already know. A few observations:
1. Downtown is heavily weighted towards sectors like public admin, education, healthcare, etc. and is quite weak on sectors that drive commerce, growth, and tax base seen in other downtowns
2. I would be very curious to compare these numbers over time as I feel the lack of growth in employment numbers, companies and sectors in the last 20 years would tell another unfortunate story...possibly even a decline in certain sectors and employee numbers
3. Obviously Calgary has a very strong concentration of oil and gas, pipeline, utilities, mining and energy companies in its downtown core, along with the engineering firms that service them. But to see how little of that we have also further highlights how our downtown versus suburbs are because most (basically all) companies in those sectors in Edmonton reside in the suburbs or industrial areas. I compare this to Dallas as Houston where despite having a heavier concentration of those types of companies in downtown Houston, Dallas still has quite a companies and employment basis in its downtown fabric. Basically, the contrast between workers and employers in those sectors in Edmonton and Calgary is stark.

Worst of all, there is has been no appetite to changing this. As I noted in another thread, one of the number one reasons people choose to live downtown is because they work downtown. There is a strong correlation between employment growth downtown and residential growth so I am not surprised at all that given the low concentration of "professional" type jobs and firms downtown that we continue to experience what we do on the residential side.
 
TAS said:
Keith Gerein has written about it twice and I'm looking forward to hearing what's in the works with the city, province and OEG in terms of an upcoming (project?) announcement for downtown.

Hopefully will be announced soon.
Click to expand...

I know it will never happen, and I am sure folks here will tell me why it's a dumb idea... but......

THEY SHOULD PUT A COSTCO BEHIND ROGERS ARENA!

Seriously though... that would be amazing. They could even build it like the Vancouver one, with underground parking and condos on top of it.
 
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