But, it doesn’t happen.
Erik Backstrom, the senior planner with the City of Edmonton’s City Planning Branch, looks back at some of the mistakes that were made four decades ago.
“The idea was that ‘If you zone it, they will come,’” says Backstrom. “The idea was to do transit-oriented development in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but it didn’t work.”
Why? Because the tracks split the stadium area from any proposed developments. To get to the river valley from the stadium, you’d have to cross the tracks, which were fenced off, or walk underground through the station itself. As well, there were still pockets of industrial buildings, some of which sat vacant, which wasn’t all that palatable for developers. Who wants to live next to a lumber yard or a cement plant? And, well, where were the sidewalks?
So, a lack of connectivity and infrastructure, and an intimidating track all worked together to keep the area from realizing its potential. But the dream of revitalizing that area never died. Let’s get back in the time machine and set it for 2014. The city announces $14 million worth of infrastructure upgrades for the area, and Brookfield Residential purchases seven acres of land to the east of Stadium LRT station from the Muttart family. With new pathways, plans for a revitalized LRT station and new roads on the blueprints, the connections that the neighbourhood needed were put in place.
Brookfield subdivided the land it purchased from the Muttarts into four plots, three of which were purchased by Rohit.
People should start moving into the Stadium Yards by the end of 2020, in low-rise residential rental properties. There’s a mix of commercial space in the area. According to Russell Dauk, vice president, land and commercial for Rohit, the development, when finished, will have four plots containing around 1,000 residential units. Rohit’s three blocks could make up 750 of them.
The area will feature two new urban parks, both designed by Claude Cormier. He is the Montreal-based landscape architect who designed Toronto’s Sugar Beach, an area of once-industrial waterfront area that was transformed into a sandy urban playground.