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The Quarters a truly pioneering concept
Next, and soon, comes actual act of city building
Todd Babiak
The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
On a warm, late-summer afternoon, this
quarter of the Quarters is serene. Only the
ambient hum of cars, birdsong and the
slightly out-of-tune bells of City Hall
interrupt the quiet. On one side of 103rd
Avenue east of 95th Street is a newish
collection of modest bungalows, fronted by
artful landscaping, that seems transported
from an affluent suburb. On the other side
is Liberty Quarters, a handsome condo
redevelopment with themed suites called,
however unimaginatively, The Greenwich, The
Central Park, The Broadway and The Soho.
They feature jetted tubs, quartz
countertops, hardwood and porcelain tile
flooring.
Liberty Quarters is walking distance to a
redesigned Louise McKinney Riverfront Park,
to the river, to Chinatown and Little Italy,
to the most elegant restaurants downtown and
to the cultural institutions of Winston
Churchill Square.
It sounds perfect. Yet half a block away, on
95th Street, old groceries like the
Wonderland and This Planet Natural Foods are
boarded up. A gaggle of men and women sit in
the shade of a dilapidated halfway house,
drinking and roaring and stumbling about.
Between here and 97th Street, a pioneer
downtown east-sider must pass the Mount
Royal Hotel, one of the least desirable
addresses in the city, and enough greyness
and gravel to shoot a movie about the end of
the world.
An aerial view of The Quarters, with its
parking lot estuaries, couldn't be more
depressing. But Duncan Fraser, a senior
planner with the City of Edmonton, is
delighted. Last Monday night, after years of
planning and meetings, Fraser and his team
held the 10th and final public consultation.
They go to city council with the rezoning
applications in November. Shortly
thereafter, they move into implementation.
From their inviting storefront on Jasper
Avenue and 93rd Street, Fraser and his
private-sector partners will "re-scale the
grid," to break up the parking lots and
build something functional yet magnificent
in 18 blocks of Edmonton's downtown east
side.
"We have three rules for developers," says
Fraser, a soft-spoken man who nevertheless
radiates passion and excitement about his
project. "We want great-looking
architecture. We want something green and
sustainable. And we want a contribution to
Edmonton's affordable housing policy."
Partnerships between the city and developers
operate on a points system. The more the
developers give, the more they get in
incentives. The vision for The Quarters has
been a collaboration between the community,
the municipal government, experts in
architecture and design, city planning and
social policy from here and from model
cities such as Portland.
City-building of this sort has never really
happened in Alberta. We're so much younger
than European capitals, which benefited from
kings, queens and tyrants who wanted their
greatness reflected on the streets.
We missed the ambitions in Montreal and New
York to be grander than their European
models. More recently, the boom-and-bust
cycle, a "get in and get out" strategy and
philosophies of extreme laissez-faire
economics have allowed cheapness and
profitability to trump beauty -- hence the
wooden boxes plastered with vinyl siding,
the windowless concrete bunkers, the parking
lots.
No matter what your philosophy happens to
be, it's impossible to come up with an
argument against The Quarters, an evolution
in careful, inspired city-building.
Developers receive a lot for their
willingness to gamble on this bold
initiative. Usually, they must spend plenty
of time and plenty of money on rezoning.
They must meet with and satisfy the Edmonton
Design Committee. For developers that sign
on to The Quarters, Fraser and his team take
care of the zoning.
They have already met with the Edmonton
Design Committee five times, leaving
developers with a quick turn-around time and
a formula that allows for plenty of
creativity -- and profitability.
In April, a 16-storey condo tower called the
ValleyView was announced. It will face the
gorgeous Gibson Block on Jasper Avenue and
96th Street. This is the base of The
Armature, a park-like "beachfront" with
brownstone-type homes opening on a
pedestrian walkway -- replacing 96th Street.
The city is talking to the federal
government about moving operations from the
historic, riverfront Grierson Complex, which
could be transformed into retail space,
condominiums, even a city museum.
We tend to be a cynical people in Edmonton.
Efforts at downtown revitalization have
broken our hearts so many times before.
Strolling or cycling through The Quarters,
though, past the boarded-up groceries and
over the glass-strewn "$2, all day" parking
lots, it doesn't take a surplus of
imagination to see and feel the future of
the city.
© The Edmonton Journal 2008
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| In the Media |
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The Edmonton Journal's Todd Babiak takes a trip to Liberty Quarters in its serene downtown setting.
READ MORE...
A superb article about Liberty and The Quarters Downtown from the Calgary Herald. It ran on the first two pages of the Saturday New Condos section.
Word has spread to our sister city to the south!
READ MORE...
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