No, it is not a similar situation, at all. Not even close.
The aversion of out of town or institutional investors to downtown Edmonton is not similar to what is going on in Calgary because you found one developer selling a land parcel there. That land will go quickly for a number of reasons including but not limited to the attractiveness of what is going on in East Village, the Riverwalk, the attractiveness and general activity of downtown Calgary. As the article mentions there is already interest from Vancouver developers. Heck, a developer from Texas is building a new massive hotel in the Stampede area.
https://storeys.com/calgary-cmlc-stampede-park-bmo-centre-hotel-matthews-southwest-hospitality/
As I mentioned before, you may be surprised at how long it takes for the 101 site as Edmonton developers have all passed on the site, institutional is very sour on downtown Edmonton, and (simply for example because of the article) developers from Vancouver and Toronto don't have a history of being attracted to downtown Edmonton.
I by no means am saying this site wont get sold, or wont be sold to an institutional investor, but there is a reason why you don't see out of town developers buy land or succeed building developments in downtown Edmonton. The word is out and has been for some time and continues to be.
This is just my opinion and prediction but you may get someone who buys it and holds it for a long long time before we seeing anything developed or you get someone who is unfamiliar with downtown Edmonton that sees this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy something in a downtown Canadian core. However, that last part is literally what the German pension fund thought with city center and they have been burned with how that turned out.