From tomorrow morning's Hicks on Six column:
Selling the idea of downtown arenaBy GRAHAM HICKS, EDMONTON SUN
Doing it rightEverything about the Edmonton Arena District open house yesterday speaks well of the future.
That the Katz Group — the developer — put the time and effort into the event to do it right, speaks volumes about the project.
The company’s lead dogs on the plan, executive VP Bob Black, in-house planner Jim Lowe and communications folks
Steve Hogle and Janet Riopel, put in a full day of just hanging around, talking to the press, the public, the politicians and half the town’s players.
When you just hang out, when you provide a forum, positive discussion happens.
Hometown folksPoint 1: The financing and government involvement has still to be worked out, but this is not a capricious multi-national corporation swooping down to rape the city.
The top dog, the biggest drugstore magnate in North America and owner of the Oilers, Oil Kings and Capitals, is a born-and-bred Edmontonian. So are his lieutenants.
Hogle (former CTV Edmonton news director), Black and Daryl Katz were high school pals in the ‘70s.
Their families lived in Rio Terrace. They called themselves the Rio Trio.
For realPoint 2: This isn’t a city-inspired vision that’s all design and dream, but no money.
Katz is an Edmontonian with deep roots and deep pockets, pushing his city to world-class quality.
Yes, Katz will likely make some money. But A) he doesn’t need to, and B) if profit was his sole motive, he wouldn’t be investing in downtown Edmonton.
I don’t see any other heavy hitters piloting such ambitious projects. Do you?
We’ve done it beforePoint 3: We’ve all forgotten the city has seen mega-development before.
West Edmonton Mall’s four phases in the 1980s, a dozen big towers, hotels and retail centres in the downtown during the ’70s.
The arena district is on “brown field” land. Historic buildings are not being torn down. Residential areas are not being disturbed.
If we don’t do itPoint 4: The consequences of NOT having an arena district are crippling. The selling points — the sports and concert venue, the community arena, restaurants, shopping, entertainment, offices, hotels, linkages to the greater downtown — are about quality of urban life. Like the Citadel, the art gallery, Winspear Centre, the River Valley Alliance, our schools and our hospitals, the arena district makes Edmonton a more attractive place to live.
“My biggest nightmare,” says one thinker, “is to find a Stantech or PCL moving to Chicago because they can’t attract quality people to Edmonton.”
Poised for transformationPoint 5: Around the arena and its winter garden on the presentation schematics are two hotels, two office towers (one an up to 62-storey architectural masterpiece) a student highrise, two condo towers, a second arena and a casino.
To those who feel it’s “just too big,” remember, we have absorbed all previous growth.
We are a smart, well-positioned, well-run city in which superior transportation and social infrastructure is being realized.
If you build it, they will come. The oilsands should — if environmentally solid — generate one trillion dollars in the next two decades. That’s wealth creation such as Canada has never seen.
Edmonton is poised to further reap the benefits. Like oilsand offices congregating in our downtown.
Win-win situationPoint 6: The fear of the district sucking up all available development is unfounded. Ken Cantor represents next-door Qualico. The EPCOR tower takes one of Qualico’s nine acres. But he’s all for the arena district, as it grows the whole city. “I’ll happily take 10% less of a 30% bigger pie,” he says.
Jasper Avenue is irrelevant. Leading cities no longer have one main street. They have districts. Edmonton has Old Strathcona, 124 Street, West Edmonton Mall, the Churchill Square arts precinct, the Jasper and 109 clubbing area and, soon, the arena district.
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http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/columni ... 54466.html