When City Council first approved the Blatchford redevelopment project in July 2009, it was hailed as the centrepiece of Edmonton’s future. After decades of suburban development had stretched the city’s edge like sprawling, low-density pseudopods, an infill development on the site of the former City Centre Airport signalled a step towards sustainable multi-family housing. The headline read a 30,000-person core community with two LRT stations, ample green space and 20 per cent affordable housing that relied on 100 per cent renewable energy. It was a bold vision, but perhaps even more ambitious were the timelines: Demolition of the airport and preliminary construction were slated to occur in 2014, with the first families expected to move into Blatchford just two years later.
Today Blatchford boasts just over 50 occupied units, a figure that puts it well below the pace projected in its initial business case of up to 12,000 residences by 2040. It is not clear, however, whether Blatchford has been the victim of overly idealistic measures, poor project management or both. The early projections of 500 lots sold per year far outstrip the rate of development of typical residential neighbourhoods, let alone first-of-their-kind communities. That is also before considering delays caused by the long approval process for its custom-designed streets and walkways, funding shortfalls from higher orders of government and debates over the appropriate community energy source (the City ultimately decided on a geothermal district energy sharing system).
“We’re talking about completely dismantling an airport and a ton of remediation and demolition that had to happen,” says Councillor Anne Stevenson, whose Ward O-day’min contains the Blatchford area. Stevenson herself worked as an urban planner for the city for seven years before taking office in 2021.
“If we look at [Blatchford’s rate of development] on that scale, it is actually pretty impressive in my mind. The original business case was extraordinarily aggressive. So, to measure ourselves against that is not constructive.”
Stevenson’s words echo those of an October 2022 report on Blatchford prepared by city administration, which similarly referred to the project’s initial timelines as “aggressive” and not totally “realistic.” The report was in response to a motion asking administration to investigate the project’s costs and the possibility of the City stepping aside as developer in an attempt to speed up progress. Administration ultimately recommended against selling half of the Blatchford lands to private developers, citing an inability to recoup the millions already spent on remediation and a lack of private partners interested in executing the City’s specific original vision. Council’s Executive Committee voted unanimously to accept administration’s report, signalling an intent for the City to remain at the helm of the development project. The report also suggested moving away from the initial projected timelines and towards yearly forecasting.
“The report is gobbledygook because you can’t actually test any of the assumptions in it,” says Ward pihêsiwin councillor Tim Cartmell, who has been an outspoken critic of the City’s management of the Blatchford project. Cartmell was actually the source of the motion for administration to provide an update on Blatchford, but was unable to vote on the report due to him not sitting on Executive Committee.
“People have tied their personal reputations to supporting Blatchford in this way and are unwilling to consider other approaches,” Cartmell says, identifying the political motivations he sees steering the Blatchford development. “It was my motion and it was sent to a committee that I’m not a member of so that I didn’t get to vote. And rather than sending the report to council to allow me that opportunity, they voted anyway. So it was very, very politically driven and not an example of a decision made from a governance perspective. It was made from a political perspective.”
While Cartmell emphasizes his support for Blatchford as a net-zero core community, he takes issue with council layering on exceptional standards regarding architectural design, zoning and density. He is concerned that in addition to slowing the pace of development and driving up the cost to the City, the additional requirements have priced out all but a small subset of potential homebuyers.
For perspective, the mean home price in Blatchford is approximately $700,000, or over $200,000 more than the Edmonton average. That figure must be viewed, however, in light of Blatchford’s considerably smaller stock and its tendency to skew prices towards those of the neighbourhood’s more premium units. Residents like Stephanie McAllister also mention the rental income they have been able to generate from the units’ basement and garden suites — just one of the community’s zoning standards — and how it has helped offset some of the front-end investment currently needed to get into a home in Blatchford.
Blatchford Development Manager Tom Lumsden highlights that the homes currently built in the area are projected to be the largest and most expensive units made available, with future builds being smaller and more affordable.
“If you want to live in a brand-new build in central Edmonton, you’re going to go into one of the neighbouring communities — that’s the best comparative — buy a house, tear it down and build two skinny [houses]. The price of doing that is very similar to what you’re paying in Blachford for a brand-new build that’s landscaped and has a garage,” Lumsden says.
“Right now the only product is the fee simple townhome so that’s what everybody is talking about in terms of why they think it’s not affordable,” he adds. “As other builders come on they’ll have different prices and they’ll find efficiencies, but at the end of the day, if you want a brand-new build, that’s the market price for that location.”
Lumsden stresses the need to view Blatchford within the context of the wider housing market: its slow initial development is symptomatic of a post-2014 market slump and its current prices are a reflection of a post-pandemic boom. But accepting market-based explanations implies that the project is being managed according to market principles, a notion some would suggest does not align with the City’s approach up to this point.
Updates from City administration, for example, report that the City has invested over $186 million into Blatchford and seen only $38 million in the way of revenues. While those would be eye-watering margins in the private sector, the project has the benefit of an abnormally resilient developer in the City. Stevenson characterizes that ability to brave losses as evidence of the City’s “extremely patient capital” and further evidence of why it — and not private industry — is best positioned to assume the risk of developing Blatchford. But it is also worth noting that where the private sector has consenting shareholders, municipalities have duty-bound taxpayers.
“Why are we diverting taxpayer money to subsidize housing for people who are purchasing $750,000 townhomes?” asks Kalen Anderson, executive director of the Urban Development Institute and a former senior planning director at the City of Edmonton. “A typical individual is not in the market for a brand-new, ground-oriented townhouse in central Edmonton. Is it true that a skinny home or a beautiful new townhouse in Westmount would be the same price as one of these products in Blatchford? Yeah, sure. But that’s still a niche market.”
Anderson’s comments are damning, especially considering her role in developing the city’s density-focused City Plan. They also strike at a fundamental concern regarding Blatchford’s wider appeal. Given its lack of present amenities and home prices that have not yet undergone the fall promised by the City, there is a question of whether Blatchford will ever appeal to homebuyers motivated by practicality rather than principle. Supporters would say that shift has already started to occur; speaking to a couple that recently moved to Blatchford from Calgary, they mention choosing the community primarily because of its eye-catching design and not its sustainable features. It remains to be seen whether those comments are indicative of a growing appeal, but it is certainly the kind of outlook needed to transform Blatchford into a mainstream core community.
A favourable take on Blatchford would point to the fact that just seven years passed between the last flight from City Centre Airport in 2013 and the first resident moving into the community in 2020. And while the proceeding years did not progress at the blistering pace envisioned by council, the remediation of the lands and completion of the first district energy centre have left the project poised to enter a more dynamic phase of development.
Critics, on the other hand, would argue that despite shifting away from its initial timelines, the City is yet to abandon the development model that made those timelines so unattainable. And until council adopts an approach that can generate and meet the demand needed to sustain a 30,000-person net-zero community, Blatchford will remain an expensive vanity project in an already creaky municipal budget. In either case, it is clear that the coming years will see the project judged by its present results rather than its past projections. A decade after the last plane departed, the former airport lands are at a new inflection point. Only time will tell whether it turns out to be a gradual, steady ascent or a slow, plunging decline.
“What I believe is happening is a huge critical mass of energy and activity that is starting to build momentum,” Stevenson says. “To use a very apt analogy, it’s like a plane taking off. It takes time to go down the runway, build up that speed and then you’re lifting off. And I think we are just at that point where we’ve built up that speed and momentum and we’re really starting to take off.”
This article appears in the July/Aug 2023 issue of Edify
