They did a soft opening in the start of February, it's owned by Eurest. It's a satellite location of their food court in the law court building; so the food comes from there every day. If it goes well, then they'll put money into renovating the space to the specs needed to cook food in-house (I think they have an air fryer and a panini grill though). AFAIK, that name is temporary; they had an internal survey not too long ago seeing what names the staff liked, but I'm not sure what came of that since I'm out of there because of my practicum.
That's the HVAC for the pedway system; the annex building housed it originally, so building a utility shed was easier than relocating the HVAC entirely.
The space where the QEII Cafe is now was supposed to be a timmies, but that fell through because of covid. But if you look closely, there's a narrow glass hallway behind the café/gift shop leading to a door on the north side of the fed building. That was a separate entrance put in for the timmies so that they could be open outside of the fed building's normal public hours. Eurest isn't going to bother with it unless they move on ahead with turning it into a full food-producing venue.
Speaking of the plaza and wasted structures, fun fact: They spent $800,000 on a zambonie garage, lockers, and washrooms so that the plaza could be used as a skating rink in the winter... then decided not to spend another $1 million to make it usable as an ice rink. Around a decade later, not even the washrooms are used. Not by the public, or even maintenance workers. I had to let a couple of the shoveling crew into the fed building one winter morning because they didn't have card access and had to use the wahroom; too bad this one isn't ever unlocked! I'd love to think there's some lucky janitor who has a key for it and uses it as their go-to business place that nobody else can desecrate.
The Alberta government spent $832,000 to construct a garage for a Zamboni that will never arrive after it scrapped a $1-million skating rink that had been part of the Federal Building renovations. The 128-square-metre hut on the north side of the public plaza, adjacent to the renovated historic...
edmontonjournal.com
