Connect Centre | 56.3m | 16s | ONE Properties | DIALOG

[occidentalcapital]

^this is a 90s perspective.

There's a lot up and coming here right now, don't think it is fair to underplay that.

City council support is there through Startup Edmonton and others, but more support would always be welcome!

 

[Edmonton]

Agreed, While I like this better than the last couple of renders of their proposed residential tower, it's a far cry from what was in the original.

Yes, the original tower would've been better. But buildings don't often end up looking like their design concepts. I'm still very impressed that JW, Stantec, and Rogers Place managed to stick fairly close to their initial renders.

 

[archited]

^^^^ That rendering was when the architectural firm Hariri Pontarini was the prime design architect for the high-rise portions of the project (except for the Stantec tower -- Stantec took the design of that building on themselves). HOK out of the U.S. was the architect for the arena. Tower B ended up being designed by dialog (I don't know what the specific politics were behind that choice other than dialog had a local offic and by virtue of that fact was the local Architect of Record). dialog continues to prove itself to be a utilitarian design firm not in the same league as Hariri nor HOK when it comes to creative building design. Both the previous (post-intitial-renderings) design of the apartment tower and now the office building are dialog efforts.

 

[air_ic]

We need a local architecture school, too bad they got rid of that at the u of a. Honestly, everything that has been designed and built here in Edmonton is ugly except for Gene dub’s, mostly.

 

[archited]

^^^^ Edmonton (and area) has great Architecture far beyond Gene Dub's efforts and there is a lot more on the books. Some of us are working to get a school of Architecture back. Btw as I have said before Athabasca University has a great Architecture program and is already turning out top students.

 

[TAS]

^^^^ Edmonton (and area) has great Architecture far beyond Gene Dub's efforts and there is a lot more on the books. Some of us are working to get a school of Architecture back. Btw as I have said before Athabasca University has a great Architecture program and is already turning out top students.

I have a friend living in Vancouver taking the architecture program at Athabasca U (specializing in eco architecture I believe) and is very happy with it.

 

[David A]

@CaptainBL Misery loves company -- that is why they move to Toronto (especially) and Vancouver. Edmonton is getting there. From a population perspective I believe it will overtake Calgary within the next decade to land in fourth spot and it will be challenging metro Vancouver for third by 2050. It has a bright and shiny future. I would just like to see northern Alberta's economy diversify with more creation of secondary and tertiary industries, with more emphasis on manufacturing than the sale of raw product -- I believe that is starting to happen.

Like many aspects of human endeavor, there is a herd mentality in business, people often see success or money and chase it. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not and not every business needs to be located in a major city to succeed.. I think Vancouver is often more a lifestyle choice than a business one and I don't think, despite some people's delusions, it is very easy to serve a western Canadian market well from Toronto.

I think you also are right, there is more potential in northern Alberta (there is over half of a big province north of of us, plus the NWT), which tilts the future in favour of Edmonton. Southern Alberta's economy is more developed and its area is geographically smaller, so it doesn't have the same potential for growth, plus it faces more constraints in the near future, like water supply.

 

[goodcitywhenfinished]

I see the construction boom o commin

My armchair opinion - the next 5 years are going to be heavily in favour of Alberta's/Western Canada's economy.

We are already seeing hints that we may be on the precipice of the final oil boom that everyone has been predicting would come sometime before 2040. Russian aggression has forced basically all of Europe to rethink its energy/mineral/and agricultural imports and the US has promised Europe to work out alternatives to Russian imports. This will have profound impacts on BC Natural Gas, Alberta Oil and Agriculture, Saskatchewan Minerals/Potash, and so on.

Not to derail this thread into politics but something I have been thinking about in light of recent events and how it could renew confidence in Alberta's investment environment. However morbid the causation may be.

 

[David A]

This. I have been a proponent on this forum for more and improved corporate development and for me it frustrating to continue hearing this. For decades Edmonton has not taken corporate business development serious. You can extend back all the way to having companies like Shaw, Oxford Properties, Ledcor, Telus, etc. leaving town with few city council champions to reverse that trend. Perhaps it is because historically Edmonton has been labelled a "blue collar" town but this has been an ugly trend for decades and I believe this sits on the leaders elected.

Until we have a Mayor aka Chief Branding Officer that decides one day that Edmonton's corporate relationships and development need to improve then the trend you highlight will continue. We have very few large homegrown Edmonton corporations left (Stantec, CWB, PCL) and are one Enbridge consolidation away from having the remaining roles canned from the city.

This city needs a champion that is willing to improve corporate relations and put the city's name out there with mid to large corporations considering Alberta and unfortunately, Sohi and Iveson were/are not the guys to do it, nor seem like it is a topic of interest...which ironically, is one of the largest topics that impacts the city in a significant way.

I agree with part of this and strongly disagree with another part. First, yes we as a city do need to understand the importance of having head offices more seriously overall. I feel we treat them as a nice to have, we wouldn't mind if one fell into our lap, but we don't put much effort into getting or keeping them. Then we (occasionally) wonder why they go elsewhere and we don't have that many.

However, I very strongly disagree with putting it all on the current or past mayor. How many head offices did Bill Smith, our mayor in the 1990's get to move to Edmonton? He was constantly talking about being business friendly and promoting the city. As far as I recall not one major one. In Calgary, was Mayor Nenshi considered to be especially business friendly? is the current Mayor? No! Serious business people do not care a flying flip who the mayor is or that much about what they say. Politicians come and go and half of what they say, you take with a big grain of salt anyways. Selling a city is a team effort and the Chamber of Council types that deride a particular mayor because he is not business friendly enough are really missing that part.

 

[archited]

I have a friend living in Vancouver taking the architecture program at Athabasca U (specializing in eco architecture I believe) and is very happy with it.

No doubt -- over the years I have taken over a dozen courses at A.U. (Canadian History, Anthropology, Sociology, Ethics. etc.) and I have thoroughly enjoyed every single one of them. My intention is to take many more. It is a post-secondary experience unmatched by other institutions.

 

[David A]

It was in the Globe article I posted in post 1,652 and will share the link again here:

Sale of telecom empire has ‘generational impact’ on Shaw family

Takeover would remove another head office from Alberta

www.theglobeandmail.com

The article speaks to how Shaw felt that Jan Riemer was hampering Shaw's growth and investment in Edmonton. At the time, Shaw was actively willing to invest in Edmonton's fiber optics network, they were interested in building a new head office downtown, and Jan Riemer and council were not interested in having both Shaw and TELUS (which was a recently merged company of Edmonton Telephone, aka Ed Tel and Alberta Government Telephones, aka AGT) battle for fiber optics investment in the city. Riemer and council elected to essentially leave fiber optic investment a monopoly to the newly formed Telus resulting in Shaw packing up and moving to Calgary, which was actively lobbying Shaw to move given the turmoil in Edmonton.

While I never did see this written anywhere, I heard that one Calgary council member commented at the time of Shaw's move to Calgary that the best advertising the city of Calgary could have is Edmonton (implying that all the anti-business council was only helping companies continue to choose Calgary). This was and has been the start of Edmonton having a reputation as a non business friendly city, especially when Calgary has been so successful luring and welcoming companies from Montreal (CP Rail), Imperial Oil (Toronto), Shaw (Edmonton), just to name a few.

Ironically, Telus moved its head office to Vancouver shortly after the merger of of Ed Tel and Telus leaving Edmonton without both Shaw or Telus, two homegrown telecom companies.

This trend has continued to today in which the city has seen a declining number of corporations actively looking to set up in Edmonton ( i.e. 25 HO in 2010 to 20 in 2020) and why I strongly believe that we have not seen a council or champion of business build strong relations with corporations to ensure that more corporations do not leave the city and to attract more corporations to the city.

Shaw moved to Calgary at a time right after they acquired all the cable systems in that city, they only had half here, so they quickly went to having twice as many customers there than here.

Likewise, Telus merged with BC Te. The majority of its customers were in BC after that, so moving to Burnaby followed. I believe it had little to do with who was mayor of Edmonton, Calgary or Burnaby at the time.

 

[Greenspace]

^^^There was already a façade improvement planned, my guess it that will be sped up.

The reality is that amount of square footage being used and office workers in the Downtown is stagnant, and has been for a very long time. Owners of the current CWB building will have to be very aggressive at attracting smaller firms, small engineering companies or tech start ups (Jasper/103st and area could be a bit of a tech hub if positioned correctly).

 

[archited]

^^^^ How pessimistic -- I don't believe any of that -- not even for a New York second.

 

[Oilers99]

This is great news but make no mistake about it, Edmonton council has been very hostile toward corporations and thus far this new council has shown to be the same.

 

[TAS]

This is great news but make no mistake about it, Edmonton council has been very hostile toward corporations and thus far this new council has shown to be the same.

Well one thing corporations need is talent and if you want to keep people here you need to make this a a great place to live so the rapid expansion of bike lanes and keeping the pedal to the metal on lrt expansion is a positive action.

Addressing downtown safety, homelessness etc will also be huge and hopefully this council will have success on these files, too. I like some of the direction so far on that front.