Speaking Municipally

Mack Male: Working 9:30 to 5:00, what a way to make a living. This week, council decided to keep meeting times as is, but does recommend a shorter summer vacation for future councils.
Stephanie Swensrude: Plus, heated discussion about river valley development, incentives for student housing, and what to do about Edmonton City Center.
Mack: Hi, I'm Mack.
Stephanie: I'm Stephanie.
Mack: And we're...
Both: Speaking Municipally.
Mack: Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, Episode 320. Feels like summer's over, Stephanie.
Stephanie: Yeah, yeah.
Mack: It's kind of cold out there.
Stephanie: I know, I've been fringing most days and I- I'll get out of a show at, like, 9:00 or so and I'm shivering, like, but I don't want to bring a coat because, you know, standing in line and g- getting, getting into your theater seat and, like, having a big coat with you is very annoying, but yeah, it's sad. (laughs)
Mack: My daughter is braver than I am. She's willing the summer by wearing shorts basically every day.
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: Too cold for me, but, uh-
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: ... Yes, Fringe sounds like it's going quite well.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: You got any standout shows you wanna mention?
Stephanie: So, the one that I would recommend that I don't think is gonna be sold out by the time that this is released is called Checked Out. It's written by Samantha Fraughton and it is a farce with only two actors. So, it's like, you know, slamming doors, mistaken identities, disguises. It's really, really funny and silly. I was cracking up the whole time. The actors are really talented. It was a, it was a really fun show, and it was a v- it's a very ambitious concept, a very ambitious project from this playwright. So, I would definitely recommend Checked Out. It's at the Gateway Theatre and it has a couple more showtimes, so definitely go see that one. (laughs)
Mack: Checked Out, okay. And then anything that is sold out, but maybe there's hope for a holdover that you-
Stephanie: Oh.
Mack: ... really enjoyed?
Stephanie: Yeah, I think if you're able to get tickets to Ratacademy 2, I mean, that is, like, obviously Ratacademy is the fe- the darlings of the festival, but it was so funny. I actually, I didn't see it the other years that it's been around. This was my first year seeing it, and I loved it. I was laughing, I cried a little bit, I danced, I sighed, I, I did everything.
Mack: (laughs)
Stephanie: And it was a great time. (laughs)
Mack: That's awesome. Well, some excellent recommendations from Stephanie.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: Thank you very much for that. Fringe is still going on. Lots of the Taproot team out enjoying the Fringe.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: Which is awesome to see. We got a lot to talk about today. Before we do that, we've got an ad to read.
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Mack: Well, I find this a bit strange, but one of the things that council talked about this week and made some decisions about is meeting times for the next council.
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: I always feel like you should just let the next council decide that stuff. They're gonna meet and they're gonna have an organizational meeting and all that kind of thing, but there was a proposal to change maybe the times of our meetings, make some other tweaks. What- what was on the table this week for council to consider?
Stephanie: Yeah, so you're right that the next council will ultimately have the final vote on this, but administration is bringing it forward to this current council to kind of get their feedback on it. There were three major changes in the report. Now, the first one would be to end the typical meeting at 5:30 rather than 5:00, so it'd go from 9:30 to noon, 1:30 to 3:30, and then 3:45 to 5:30 instead of 5:00. The other one is adding an extra public hearing day, because this term, lots of people coming out to speak at public hearing meetings, and lots of them had to have, um, like, emergency extra days scheduled. The last change is to have four weeks of summer vacation instead of five. So, at the meeting this week, there wasn't too much pushback on the extra public hearing day and the shorter summer vacation, but council was pretty unanimously against changing the length of the daily meeting to 5:30. Some of the pushback was because, and I didn't know this, I don't have kids, so I didn't know this, but apparently daycare operators will fine you, like, by the minute if you're late to pick up your kids. So, um, like Michael Johns was saying, I think his- he has to pick up at 6:00, and for every minute that he's late, it's, like, $10 or something, which is wild. I don't know, Mack, did- is- is this something that you've had experience with?
Mack: Well, fortunately, I don't think we've ever been later than the time, but it is a constant and common practice at, daycares especially to, to charge if you're late to pick up. Sometimes it's by the minute, which is a bit extreme. Sometimes it's, like, for every 15 minutes or you know, whatever, but you know, it's to try to prevent parents from just taking advantage of leaving the kid there and going to do something else.
Stephanie: Ugh.
Mack: And you know, those you know, the people who work in daycares, they have lives too. They need to get out of there. They got stuff to do.
Stephanie: Exactly.
Mack: Um, so I'm glad that that came up at council, and to me, I guess this is just a really great example of why we need diverse representation.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: If I think back to the previous couple of councils, I'm not sure childcare concerns would've been much of a topic of discussion. But a number of the councillors on this current council have young, young kids. And so it makes sense that that would come up.
Stephanie: And of course, a lot of them are young mothers, which typically in this, like, patriarchal society, the question of childcare goes to the mother to have to figure out, right? Um, another reason though that people, that councillors were against changing, is that they were just kind of against giving...... themselves extra time, so Councilor Aaron Paquette said, "Would not the easier approach be to have everyone prepared, everyone having read the reports and understand when their questions are redundant, and have the chair maybe point that out?" And he said later, "A council that prepares well and debates efficiently will serve Edmonton better, and that's worth striving for." And Andrew Knack agreed. He said, "When we give ourselves more time, we fill the time." I thought that was a really interesting take. What do you think, Mack? (laughs)
Mack: Well, I think that's pretty rich coming from Councilor Paquette who's not known for his brevity, I will say.
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: I mean, he, he can definitely use his time, the time allotted.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Mack: And, you know, what Councilor Knack is talking about there, "When we give ourselves more time, we fill the time," ugh, can we not apply that to some other things? Induced demand, hello. When we build wider roads, we fill the roads with more cars. The same thing happens with, with time, and so I, I mean, that... No argument from me that you spend... You give yourself more time, you're gonna spend more time, and sure, yes, it's easy to say, "We should all be better prepared, and everyone should have read the reports, and we could do better job of meeting management," but there's some practicalities to, to contend with as well, right? Which is, you know, not everyone has the same level of knowledge or understanding about all of the reports. People have different staff. People have other obligations. There's conflicts that come up all the time. Like, it's, you know, it's challenging, I think, to be a city councilor and read the number of reports-
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: ... that they have. I mean, another recommendation I would make, having listened to this council for the last four years, is not just be prepared, but maybe ask for fewer reports in the first place. Like, lighten the load. We've had an awful lot of analysis and reports and bring stuff back, and it just creates, you know, all of these conditions where it gets challenging to do all the meetings in the time allotted.
Stephanie: So just because I only started being a reporter in... Like, an Edmonton City Hall reporter in, like, 2022, so can you tell me, was that issue of asking for so much analysis, so many reports, was that as bad with previous councils or is this council, like, especially, you know, always asking for reports?
Mack: I'm sure someone's gonna fact-check me on this-
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: ... and it's, like, recency bias, I suppose, but it does seem to me, anecdotally at least, the perception I have of this council is they've done more of that than previous councils. Like, it used to be a relatively big deal when, when a councilor made an inquiry that would result in a report coming back, and it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal now. Like, it happens quite a bit.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: I think there's some other evidence that it has maybe increased over time because you've seen administration encourage the use of memos instead of reports to share information back and forth because that can be a faster way, you know, to get the information back, so I do think that has, has, changed a little bit. But, you know, how many councils have been going now? I don't know what, when those, those hours came into effect, the ones you outlined, you know, ending at 5:00 PM, but it's been quite a while.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: And if we could do all of the big council business in previous terms in that time, surely we can find a way to organize things and, and, prioritize things in such a way that we can continue to stay within that time for the next city council.
Stephanie: Yeah, with the whole things expand to fill the space that you give them, I f- I feel that way with, like, when I'm cleaning my house. If I have, like, six hours to clean my house, it's gonna take six hours, but if I have an hour before, like, a friend comes over, I'll get the same amount of work done. Um-
Mack: Amazing how that works, isn't it?
Stephanie: Right? But I, I don't know if I 100% agree with this when it comes to, like, democracy and governance 'cause I think that, like, you know, these decisions are big deals that affect people. So I don't know if the 30 minutes... I don't really know what the effect would have. But either way, they decided to keep it at the status quo, and also, this council, won't have any people voting on it. The next council will be voting on it, so...
Mack: They'll ultimately decide about both the vacation and the extra, public hearing day as well.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: I think you're... You know, it's a fair point. These are important things that need time to be considered, and I think that's probably, if I'm being less facetious, more seriously what Councilor Paquette is getting at. You know, we come to the meeting not to start reading things and to start the discussion and to start figuring it, but to get to the decision, and the more work you do upfront, the less time you're gonna need in order to do all of that in the meeting, so we'll see about that. We don't wanna dwell on this or the time is gonna expand for us too.
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: Um, but I did wanna quickly mention, in another report they mentioned, they talked about this week, which was about social media, and, just a few nuggets I wanted to pull out from there 'cause we've talked about social media in recent episodes. Your Instagram story last week, for example, was pretty interesting. The city, currently primarily uses X, Facebook, and Instagram. They said they have made changes to X, or Twitter. They, they no longer invest in paid advertising there, and they've reduced the frequency of posting there in favor of targeted high-impact content. They talked about how video is just going gangbusters, and so they think more video content, especially on Instagram, is something they wanna do. Uh, no TikTok because the federal government thinks that's bad and China's gonna spy on us, so the city follows that guidance, and they don't have TikTok. And then they just mentioned two other social platforms, Mastodon and Bluesky, and said they don't have an active strategy for those two platforms, but they have proactively secured social media handles on those platforms. Uh, this is, you know, what I used to do way back when. I, I registered a lot of these social media platforms (laughs)-
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: ... handles on these platforms and then, you know, shared them back with the organizations. Like, in the early days of Twitter, I did that with a lot of them.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: Good to see the city being proactive about that now. Bit disappointing that they're not jumping in on, on some of these other platforms yet.
Stephanie: I mean, I think that Bluesky and Mastodon are pretty tame, but I can imagine that if, like, a TikTok user got their hands on the City of Edmonton handle, that, some chaos could be had. (laughs) But I think that, like, Bluesky users aren't going to start doing anything crazy with, the City of Edmonton social media handle.
Mack: And Mastodon is different. Like, you can control your profile there using your domain name. Like, it's a bit more technical but there's ways to make that much more official than these other platforms where all you have is the text of the name. So, it's a bit interesting they mention that one.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I, I've been trying to cut down my social media use because it is very difficult on my mental health. I do think that Bluesky, they'd reach a lot of people there. It's, Bluesky, to my opinion, seems to be the one that's kind of the closest to replacing Twitter?
Mack: The spiritual successor, you might say?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: Yeah.
Stephanie: But also at the same time, I don't really want a Twitter replacement (laughs) again. Like, I, I don't know. I'm, I'm trying to cut down on my social media, so I don't really know if I have much more to say about it. (laughs)
Mack: I think it's a good thing to cut down on social media in general. One other thing on this, Councillor Paquette put forward a motion that was carried unanimously, and I'm gonna read the motion 'cause I think it's worth it. "That administration provide a report to committee with a corporate and reputation strategy that unifies and elevates the city's social media, communications, and engagement approaches, empowering staff to deliver clearer, more creative, and more human storytelling that strengthens the reputation of Edmonton at home and beyond."
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: I wanted to read that out because this is a motion that came up in the context of an item about social media, and he's got all the major can of worms buzzwords in there. Reputation strategy, storytelling, at home and abroad, like, this is a dangerous kind of motion, I think, to put out there. Like, what kind of a report is gonna come back on this?
Stephanie: (laughs) And he's the one talking about how, like, when we're not using our time well at council. (laughs)
Mack: Yeah.
Stephanie: Yeah, that is, um... Sometimes I imagine admin, which it, it, okay, it surprises me that this, carried unanimously, but sometimes I imagine admin receiving these motions and being like, "What am I supposed to do with this?"
Mack: (laughs)
Stephanie: Like, I'm more sh-
Mack: How do we, how do we start? Where do we... What are the boundaries around this motion?
Stephanie: Yeah. (laughs) You need, like, a master's degree in English Literature to write this, um, th- report. I don't know. (laughs)
Mack: A- and, you know, you're pulling in multiple departments in this motion. You've got social media, communications, engagement, corporate, the word corporate, and reputation strategy. Like, there's different people at the city responsible for all of that, and maybe that's not a good thing. Maybe they should simplify all of that. But it seems like this is a can of worms kind of motion, so I, I too am surprised that it went forward unanimously, and, you know, nobody was like, "Wait a minute, should we not do that? That maybe isn't a great idea."
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: Well, another thing that some people think is not a great idea came up at council this week, which was the River Valley redevelopment plan.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: So, you were paying attention to this a bit, Stephanie. What happened here?
Stephanie: Yeah. So, this is, the, this process has been going on for a couple years at least now, and, um, kind of similar to the way that the zoning bylaw renewal process kind of took all of the different city planning documents and put it into one, this River Valley area redevelopment plan is kind of taking all the disparate documents and putting them into one. Based on what I read from it, it doesn't seem like huge changes. I don't think that there's gonna be, like, a hotel in the middle of the River Valley anytime soon. Um, it doesn't really feel like there's gonna be huge changes. Um, some of the th- criticisms that River Valley advocates had were that the bylaw doesn't have strong enough language to adequately protect the environment. So, they're saying the bylaw says stuff like may or should versus shall, and that's, like, something with a legally binding obligation-
Mack: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Stephanie: ... or discouraged versus prohibited. Another thing that this plan, the new plan introduces is that if it's up to 10,000 square meters a development in the River Valley, if someone wants to build something, then the decision can go to city administration rather than council. So, you know, council can't vote on it. They wouldn't, in theory, hear from their constituents, and it just kinda limits oversight.
Mack: It wouldn't go onto an agenda.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: So, this is a similar kind of practice to funding. Often there's, like, a threshold on contracts, for example, and if it's under the threshold then administration can just deal with it. If it's above, then-
Stephanie: Yeah.
Mack: ... council needs to deal with it. So currently, my understanding is any redevelopment or any proposal in the River Valley, council would have a say on essentially, and this would change that for the smaller ones. So, help, help me understand. How big is 10,000 square meters? You said two football fields?
Stephanie: Yeah. I kind of, I was, like, looking on Google Maps how you can, like, measure out things, and I was trying to find a way for people to be able to envision this. So, the gravel parking lot that's, like, used by the Old Southkona Farmers' Market, that's around 7,000, 7,500 square meters.
Mack: Okay.
Stephanie: So, that's getting up there, and then so these River Valley advocates, they want the, the size reduced to 500 square meters, and what I used for that reference was I measured my condo building on Google Maps and it's, like, a very average sized three-story condo building that is 600 square meters. So, if someone wanted to build something about the footprint of, like, a regular apartment building, that is the largest you could do without council oversight.
Mack: Hmm.
Stephanie: But current-
Mack: If, if the critic's proposal-
Stephanie: Yes.
Mack: ... went ahead.
Stephanie: And then the lar- and, and then what the cur- what it currently is is if you take about the size of that big parking lot... I hope that people are able to envision what I'm saying. (laughs) Um, then that would be, anything that size or smaller, city administration could approve.
Mack: Right. That does seem like a large amount of space.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: So, you can build quite a bit on 10,000 square meters, and for, for no council oversight there to happen-... is definitely a change. So what happened with this bylaw?
Stephanie: It was approved, I believe it was Councilor Joanne Wright, did introduce a motion saying, "Could we maybe send this back and get a little bit more engagement?" And it failed and... yeah, l- again, like I said, I don't think that it's gonna have, like, humongous changes right off the bat. I think that it's more likely... I don't think there's gonna be huge changes right off the bat. Rather, every time a new development comes up, we'll kinda hear about it again.
Mack: Councilor Wright did bring another motion forward, which did pass unanimously, which is to prepare an unfunded service package for the fall budget adjustment related to the trail strategy, that was also mentioned in the context of this, River Valley Redevelopment Plan.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: Well, I'm sure we'll hear more about that and, you know, might even come up in the context of the election. People have strong feelings-
Stephanie: Oh, yeah.
Mack: ... about our, our river valley, our gem of rive- of, our river valley. Another thing I wanted to mention that council made some decisions about recently, we didn't talk about in previous episodes but we got another little update this week is this housing, student housing incentive for downtown. So this is a $15 million incentive that is d- intended to address student housing affordability, boost downtown Edmonton's vitality. And so what this is, is part of the Housing Accelerator Fund. The program offers up to $30,000 per unit for new student housing builds downtown and they're moving quickly. Some applications close, the first round here in September and then there's some more. And so the goal here is to deliver more than 500 new units of housing by 2026. I, I'm, I assume they mean by the end of 2026.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: Um-
Stephanie: Yeah, it'd be pretty impossible- (laughs)
Mack: (laughs)
Stephanie: ... if not.
Mack: So I wanted to mention this because I feel like in the context of downtown discussion, there's relatively broad consensus that a lot of our problems would be, not solved, but at least reduced if more people lived downtown. If instead of 11 or 12,000 people we had 30,000 people, that could be a really positive thing for business and for all the other concerns we have downtown. Housing for students is a big one. The city says that, you know, more than 80% of Edmonton students who rent housing spend more than 30% of their income and, and that's higher than the national average. So more students in Edmonton who rent housing are worse off than, than students across the country on average. So I think this is a good example of the city getting involved and intervening to incentivize something that we want to happen. We have large educational institutions downtown in NorQuest and MacEwan, the U of A also has a presence downtown. We know we want more people living downtown. Why not build some student housing? If the market's not gonna do it on its own, what can we do to incentivize it? So I think this is a really great initiative and I'm glad to see this moving ahead. What do you think?
Stephanie: Yeah, I think it pulls together a lot of different threads. It addresses affordability for students who are kind of f- you know, famously a very broke segment of, of society.
Mack: Yeah.
Stephanie: It ad- it addresses the vibrancy of downtown because, again, like you said, having people live there... And not only, I mean, students... (laughs) When I go to Whyte Avenue and, the young people certainly contribute to a vibrant nightlife on Whyte Avenue.
Mack: (laughs)
Stephanie: Lots of young people (laughs) on, on the, on, walking down the streets late at night there. So I think that it c- it could, it could really, like, add some juice in that, in that area. Even to do with, traffic congestion and climate because all of these students are going to be, instead of potentially driving and parking downtown, they'll live right by their university and just walk over. I think that could be really great. And I do, I think it's interesting how this is coming through the Housing Accelerator Fund, which is a federal program, and apparently this is the first one in Canada. Like, I, I'm getting the vibe that they are testing this out in Edmonton to see if it can work in other, in other cities. So I think, I will, I'll be watching this really closely 'cause it could have the potential to really, transform downtown.
Mack: Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know it was the first one. I think this is a great example of Edmonton again taking the lead on some things that-
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: ... you know, probably are gonna become really widely accepted practices elsewhere. You know, I think the most famous housing incentive we had was the on for downtown in Railtown and, that was a long time ago. Like, we haven't had a per door housing incentive for quite some time. There was some talk and suggestion about that in the Downtown Investment Plan, you know, nothing has moved forward really so I'm glad to see this one moving forward. I had one other thing I wanted to mention, Stephanie, I've recently finished the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson and I thought it was really great, it was really fascinating. But one of the things they point out is that, you know, talking about housing for example, it's often easier and more housing is getting built, they're, they talk about the United States, in, you know, places we might consider conservative or right wing as compared to places we might consider progressive or, or left wing or Democratic in the United States, right? So they say for example Texas is building way more housing than California and they say, "Why is that?" And one of the things they point out is that to get housing built in, in blue states, you gotta meet an incredible amount of criteria. And this all well-intentioned, but the more, you know, red tape and rules and barriers and minimums and things that you apply on, the harder it is to move those things over the goal line. And so I went and looked at this eligibility criteria for the student housing incentive here and, and I d- I'm not comparing this to other things but it is interesting to note there's like 14 mandatory, minimum mandatory criteria in here. Some of them are good things you would expect to have around here like, the student units must be clearly intended for student housing, you know, there's a minimum number of units. But there are some things that, you know, the book talks about, things like, "Well, the development must achieve at least tier one of the 2020 National Energy Code for buildings."It's like, do we want to build student housing, or do we want to build housing that is energy efficient? And then on top of that, must meet all minimum building code accessibility requirements. Well, maybe that's a standard or a given anyway, but I just thought it was interesting to bring that lens to, you know, some of these new things that we're doing. It's like, on, on the one hand, we're both in agreement, an incentive to build more student housing is fantastic. On the other hand, if it becomes really, really hard to access the fund or to, to actually move those projects ahead, then you might end up in a, you know, self-defeating kind of position. So I hope that's not the case, and I hope that these things get built quickly and we have lots of new students living downtown.
Stephanie: Yeah. I think that this project might be a little bit of a test of that sort of theory, because another one of the requirements is that the student units must meet rental requirements lower than or equal to average monthly rental rate as published by the city. I see a lot of developers online say that if you force them to put affordable housing into developments, they just simply won't build, because the financial part of it just doesn't work out.
Mack: Right.
Stephanie: So requiring affordable housing will actually lead to them not building it. I mean, they're getting a whole bunch of money to provide market rate or below market rate rentals for, I think, 10 years.
Mack: That... The units need to be for students for at least 10 years is one of the requirements, yeah.
Stephanie: Oh, and then student units must meet rental... Okay, so I'm a guess... So yeah, for 10 years they must meet this affordability. So yeah, um, I see what you're saying, that like the more requirements you add on, that's more red tape. But in this p- in this case, they're getting paid to navigate around this red tape. So I don't know, it'll be an interesting experiment.
Mack: Yeah, I mean, they're getting money to build it.
Stephanie: Yeah. Right.
Mack: Not really to operate it, right? So they gotta make their financials work. But it should be possible.
Stephanie: Yeah. (laughs)
Mack: All right, well, another downtown story we wanted to talk about before we wrap up on this episode, Edmonton City Center, the mall, downtown mall that is basically empty, full of parking lots.
Stephanie: (laughs)
Mack: This is in the news. Colin on our team did a great story this week, speaking with Larissa Ortiz, a New York-based managing director at StreetCents, a planning firm, about what we might do about downtown's big empty mall.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: What did you take away from Colin's story?
Stephanie: Yeah, so excellent story, like you said. Uh, Larissa visited here in November for, like, this, event called Imagining Downtown: A Global Comparison. So she's actually been here and she's actually experienced downtown. She's not just some random person. And she talked about these different urban malls, these downtown malls across North America and what can be done with them, because something will need to be done. Like what you said, it is a huge piece of real estate in downtown that's kind of empty and like a ghost town. The municipal government in Norfolk, Virginia, the city council there voted to purchase their urban mall, the MacArthur Center Mall, in 2- 2023 for about $11 million, with an additional $7 million allotted for, like, fees associated with the purchase. Um, when the mall opened in 1999, it cost about $300 million. But so now they're, they've hired a master planner to redevelop the MacArthur Center. I think that's super interesting because, you know, the question here is, the city doesn't own this piece of property and they can't force the owner to do anything with it, but if they were to buy it then, they could actually do something with the property. Um, $18 million is really not that much. If you could have $18 million to all of a sudden have all this great real estate right in the center of downtown, that would be amazing, but then of course it's gonna cost a lot to redevelop it into whatever you want to change it to.
Mack: There's lots of books about, what to do about malls. This is not a downtown-specific-
Stephanie: Right.
Mack: ... problem. It's a, a city problem all over the place, that we have all these malls that were built in a different era that are just not as vibrant as they once have been. And I've seen some pretty interesting stuff. Like, in other places, they have turned some of them into housing or, you know, they've made them into recreation centers or, you know, those kinds of facilities. So it would be kind of interesting to see something like that happen in Edmonton. I would say that it's not very on brand for Edmonton to try to do something to help the downtown mall. There's, you know, the infamous story about West Edmonton Mall and how that, you know, making that development go forward potentially siphoned, uh, attention and, and traction away from downtown, you know, and a lot of the shopping moved out of the downtown core that historically had been there. And then, of course, in more recent history, building ICE District and, and all of the, um, retail and others- other things there. There's an argument to be made that that also drew away from, uh, the City Centre Mall. I mean, some of those plans have not come to fruition. There's no new theater in ICE District, which, you know, probably would have caused the City Centre one to close. But still, we've decided to invest in other areas around the mall than in the mall itself. So I do think it'd be interesting to see that change. Uh, I see here in the notes there's been a lot of discussion about this online as well uh, folks pointing out that nobody's been talking about this.
Stephanie: Yeah, so Brad Ferguson, who was once the head of what was called the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, which then turned into Explore Edmonton, he said on LinkedIn that he's heard crickets about the mall's closure from candidates running for council or mayor. And at the time, I was like, "True. No one is talking about what to do with this big hulking thing in the middle of downtown." And then right after that, Michael Walters, said that he will propose a revitalization strategy for the mall, in September. It's coming, it's coming soon. And one thing he called for was an investment roundtable, and he will release a receivership to revitalization plan in September.
Mack: I mean, this is so interesting. Sure, it's true that there's been crickets from the mayoral candidates about this, but is this actually really a big topic for our mayors to address? Like, there's also been...... crickets about this for the last number of years, has there not? I mean, I saw another ma- um, another candidate has entered the mayoral race. Paul Bakmet has thrown his hat in the ring, and one of the things he posted was a photo of him in front of Edmonton City Center Mall saying, "Something needs to be done about this." And that caught the eye of Juanita McBrien, who's the executive director of the Downtown Business Association, and she didn't like that very much.
Stephanie: Yes, she said, quote, "I can't even describe the level of frustration I feel when I see something like this show up in my feed from a guy I've never heard of after grinding away at these issues for the past five years. So if this issue is important to you, where have you been for the past five years? Did you just wake up and realize we have a problem?" Now some background on this is that Paul Bakmet, until he started running for mayor, he was a senior policy advisor to the Ministry of Technology and Innovation. So then she goes on to say, "If you're coming from the government of Alberta, where the actual power and resources lie, what exactly have you done for downtown Edmonton from that position of power?" So I think that here she was taking issue with the characterization that people have just been sitting around and letting Edmonton City Center fade away. I think she took issue with that because she says that she's been working hard to change them all, in her tenure as executive director of the Downtown Business Association. I think that was her issue with this post.
Mack: Well, I won't pass judgment on how effective the DBA has been at doing something about the mall. I'll let you decide that, listener. But I do think engagement is a bit of a gift, and when people are willing to get involved, I think we should be a little bit more open to that than I find this post. And I totally understand the frustration. As someone who has lived downtown, done quite a bit to try to pitch in and do my part to improve our downtown, I get the frustration when somebody comes along and says, "How have you not solved all of these problems?" But everyone comes in at different points. They don't all have the same context and background. And, you know, when folks have energy, fresh energy, and they wanna take a fresh perspective and look at things, I feel like we should try to welcome that in and see what can come of that. So maybe, cooler heads will prevail, and we'll see some collaboration or at least some, some ideas moving this forward. I don't know that this needs to be top of mind for mayoral candidates, although I would leave open the possibility that, you know, some of the things that probably should be, our housing crisis, maybe there's a role for Edmonton City Center Mall in addressing some of those things. If we do, as you say, buy it for a relatively low amount of money and find a way to redevelop it and build some much needed affordable housing right in the center of our downtown, maybe that would be a good thing.
Stephanie: Yeah, I don't know. I think that it could, I think that it represents a really good opportunity for either a mayor or the candidate for Odaeman, the ward that represents downtown and the surrounding areas. If, if someone was running and they presented a very, like, in-depth, cool plan for what to do with Edmonton City Center, I think that that would be a welcome change, because a lot of council and mayoral candidates have the same three platform priorities, which are, like, safe streets, more housing, and, like, economic development. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty, it's pretty basic, but if you were able to actually present a plan for what to do with this, it's, it'd be like an interesting little pet project maybe.
Mack: Well, I do think you're right. There's, there's something there about most of the candidates we see so far are against things.
Stephanie: Yes.
Mack: Like they're a- they're against the way-
Stephanie: Totally.
Mack: ... that we've done something so far. They're against, you know, the way that we're doing infill or whatever, and there's not a lot that they're for yet. And so I think it could be really interesting if a candidate chose to make, you know, a visionary idea, as you say, and that could be something that we wanna vote for. Even if it's not that specific plan, it's the person having an idea and a vision for what it could be, and then, you know, I guess we gotta judge how effective they're gonna be at moving that forward. But that's better than just complaining about everything, and-
Stephanie: Totally.
Mack: ... and finding the person that complains about the things that you complain about.
Stephanie: (laughs) Democracy.
Mack: Well, very, very quickly, we'll mention, that speaking of infill and mayoral policies, a couple of mayoral candidates have launched more detail about their policies on infill. Councilor Andrew Knack and Councilor Tim Cartmel both put out plans for infill this week. I don't know that we have a ton to say about it. I'd love to hear your thoughts, Stephanie. My thoughts are kind of meh. I don't think there's much new here.
Stephanie: Yeah, not much new that they haven't already been saying. So Andrew Knack's policy is a lot of, you know, there's not many changes to the actual zoning bylaw, but it's around things that people also take issue with with infill. So construction compliance and accountability, so if the person beside you, like, messes up the foundation of your house 'cause they're building.
Mack: Yeah.
Stephanie: Uh, private tree protection bylaw, he's bringing that back up. That's another big issue.
Mack: I do like that one. I do like that a lot. That's important.
Stephanie: Um, character of the neighborhood, so he wants to strengthen the Heritage Places Strategy. That strategy is still being developed right now, so I guess he would just be supporting that. Um, and then working with seniors and families for ideas on how to remove barriers to affordable accessible housing. Like, okay, sure. And then working, to encourage the development of vacant lots and derelict properties, also something that is already happening.
Mack: Right.
Stephanie: And then when it comes to Tim Cartmel, I think that he has, actually has, like, a couple actual changes to infill policy. So he wants to reduce mid-block units in the RS zone from eight to four, not eight to six like the vo- the missed vote, the infamous missed vote a few weeks ago. So maybe that's why he missed it was because it didn't go far enough.
Mack: Yeah.
Stephanie: (laughs) Um, and then reduce the corner from corner, the maximum amount of units allowed on corner lots from eight to six. He wants to reintroduce parking minimums. So I think it was a half of a parking stall per unit.
Mack: Something Edmonton has been widely praised for actually. Seems like an odd thing to want to bring back.
Stephanie: Yeah. He said that he wants to prioritize new housing in areas like downtown Blatchford, among major transit corridors and near post-secondary institutions. Okay, so two things here. One, that's already what z- the zoning bylaw renewal, district plan, and Party Growth Area Project already did.
Mack: Okay.
Stephanie: Second of all, this doesn't make much sense because the neighborhoods with the strongest opposition to infill are those ones along major transit corridors and near post-secondary institutions. So think of McKernan, Belgravia, Windsor Park, Glenora. Those are all the ones that are very concerned about infill, and those are the ones... these mature neighborhoods that are near LRT and near post-secondary. So I don't really know how those two things would be balanced. Um, speaking of, like, you know, mature neighborhood character, he would want to expand the mandate of the Edmonton Design Committee. I think that's actually an interesting, um, proposal. So the Edmonton Design Committee basically gives recommendations to new developments in certain areas, so along major roads like Whyte Avenue, Jasper Avenue, um, along, eh, entrances to the city, you know, in, like, the Highlands area, for example, I'm pretty sure. So just like, you know, tho- those types of areas, and he just wants to expand that mandate, so I think that's, that's an actual policy position. And the last thing is that he wants to develop a cumulative impact policy. So each mature neighborhood infill application should come with a summary of the cumulative effect of past infill projects on the neighborhood since January 2024 when the zoning bylaw renewal was put into place. So the number of units and bedrooms added, projected population increase, and effect on property values. I do think that this information would be interesting to read, but I don't think that it's possible to include it in infill applications, and that's because during a rezoning application, council can only talk about whether the property is suited for the particular zone. So, I don't think that you could ask to include impact on property values in a rezoning application. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you... that, like, you wouldn't be able to do that.
Mack: It certainly seems to go against the spirit of why we talk about those things at a public hearing, just to evaluate the zone and the application based-
Stephanie: Hm.
Mack: ... on what's there. So that's interesting. Yeah, I think you're right, that would be a bit questionable, although I also found myself thinking, "Wow, that'd be really good to have that information." Could be dangerous, I suppose, if we see, like, you know, there's a whole bunch of, projected population increase in a certain area. You know, maybe that would unintentionally cause councilors to not want to move forward with, you know, a perfectly valid, fine rezoning application otherwise.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: But probably we can get this information not per application, but just in more general reporting about our progress on, on infill.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. I think that, eh, like I said, this information would be really valuable, but I don't think that, like, legally at a-
Mack: Yeah.
Stephanie: ... statutory public hearing, I don't think that they're allowed to ask about that sort of thing.
Mack: Well, I'm sure we'll see other infill policies from other mayoral candidates and probably some stuff from councilors coming up as well. We'll quickly mention, by the time this episode comes out, we'll have a story published about bike lanes and some of the things we heard from, people in, who responded to our election question or who came to our listening sessions, and so good explanation there about what this council has done about active transportation, and I thought, um, you know, there's a couple of, of statistical nuggets in there that are pretty interesting. The city plans to build 31 kilometers over 17 routes in 2026. So, you know, one of the questions I have all the time is like, "What's happening? Are we building it?" And I sometimes feel like maybe the city just doesn't talk about it because it's such a lightning rod thing.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Mack: You know? Like, we don't wanna celebrate-
Stephanie: Totally.
Mack: ... all the new bike lanes we build because it just gets people riled up, but we are still building is what I learned. So that's great.
Stephanie: Yeah, there's a handy little map on the city's website. I think if you just google... Well, actually, we can put the link in the show notes, but also if you just wanna just google, like, Edmonton Bike Plan implementation, you'll be able to see the map of where the new routes will be coming. So you can see if your neighborhood will be getting a new bike lane.
Mack: All right. Well, we covered a lot of ground today, not on the bike, but on the podcast.
Stephanie: (laughs) Now, let's cover the rapid fire section. Edmonton Police are warning about distraction thefts wherein thieves approach their victims with a sob story, distracting them while accomplices rob the sympathetic stranger. Police later realized a clarifying statement saying, quote, "There seems to be some confusion. Fringe festival actors that approach you and beg you to come to their show are not trying to rob you, probably."
Mack: Edmonton City Council voted to amend the Animal Control Bylaw, increasing the fines for loose cats and dogs. The change comes after the sandal-wearing folk fest crowd let a record number of dogs out.
Stephanie: Edmonton will have a Pride parade on Saturday, August 23rd for the first time since 2018. Physics experts are excited for the event. The LGBTQ community has been building up six years of rage, resistance, and resilience and are expected to break the sound barrier.
Mack: Well, we did it, Stephanie. Another episode in the books. We've got more fringe to do. Enjoy the rest of your fringing.
Stephanie: (laughs) Indeed.
Mack: And more council to talk about, and we'll be back to do that next week.
Stephanie: Yep.
Mack: Until then, I'm Mack.
Stephanie: I'm Stephanie.
Mack: And we're...
Both: Speaking Municipally.