Not long ago, I headed downtown to join friends for dinner at Sabor on 103 Street. I pulled into a familiar parking lot behind Campio and headed south, thinking I’d walk a couple of blocks along 102 Avenue and turn north to Sabor. That was my first mistake.
I was confronted by construction fencing, seemingly everywhere. I got spun around, redirected, forced to scamper around construction debris and across 102 Street twice through cattle chute-like tunnels. Finally, I spotted the sign for Sabor’s sister restaurant, Atrium, glowing like a beacon in the night. The staff took pity on me, led me through the shared kitchen and to my destination.
At the same time, I felt pity for Sabor’s owners, and for all the businesspeople who have had to deal with construction disruption in downtown Edmonton for years.
Now, when I pitched a column on the toll construction takes on small businesses, my editor said, “If I wanted a diatribe about how roadworks are hurtful, I would call my brother.” She wanted context and possible solutions, not just shade for the City of Edmonton.
Message received. For a neutral voice, I turned to Neal LaMontagne, a former planner with the City of Vancouver and now a faculty lecturer in urban planning at the University of Alberta. We commiserated a bit, recognizing that construction is necessary and that there will always be disruptions. But then, in the spirit of continuous improvement, we got down to possible solutions.
LaMontagne wanted to start by accentuating a few positives. He says the “rip the Band-Aid off” approach that the City of Edmonton recently took with the Valley Line West LRT, where the intersection at Stony Plain Road and 124 Street was closed entirely for a couple of months rather than episodically for almost a year, speeds a project up and the strategy should be widely applied.
He also credits the city for having an in-house architect — Carol Bélanger — to advocate for its interests. Bélanger was appointed in 2010 by then-Mayor Stephen Mandel and has improved the city’s procurement processes, particularly for community centres and libraries.
Yet the city struggles with street improvements and LRT development. LaMontagne says the same approach of embedded expertise would help these projects, too. “You need experts with the city who can go to a site and talk shop with people,” he says. “You need a project lead on the city’s behalf who can make decisions.”
LaMontagne cites the Shipyards in North Vancouver as an example of a public-private development done right. It’s a community hub with restaurants, transit and public spaces. “There was a city staffer, paid for in the project budget, to advocate for the city,” he says. “They’re part of the team, checking in, looking for opportunities for improvement. It’s not a top-down oversight role; it’s an active collaborative role.”
There’s no silver bullet to solve all the headaches brought by construction, and LaMontagne cites opportunities for the city to have a stronger centralized command structure that can co-ordinate, schedule and oversee the big picture, and the need to better incorporate lessons learned to improve processes.
He tempers his criticism, having seen how the sausage is made during his days in Vancouver. “It could be worse,” he says. “And it could always be better.” Amen to that.
Dinner at Sabor was excellent, by the way. I highly recommend it. Be sure to try the bacon-wrapped dates, and do give yourself plenty of time to get there.
This article appears in the September 2026 issue of Edify
