You won't believe what our city council is up to
You know, I've seen a lot of things come and go in this city. Oilers dynasties, the great West Edmonton Mall boom, the perpetual motion of construction season on the Henday. But even I paused, coffee halfway to my mouth, when I saw the city's new plan to tackle derelict properties. Apparently, Edmonton is embarking on a four-year odyssey to deal with those long-empty commercial buildings, the ones that sit like missing teeth along arteries like 118th Avenue or just off Whyte, gathering dust and the occasional tumbleweed. It's not a quick fix, mind you. This isn't like lacing up your skates and scoring in overtime. No, this is more like a carefully orchestrated power play, slowly but surely trying to clear the zone.
Honestly though, the sheer bureaucratic mountain they have to climb before they can even *think* about a punitive tax is something else. We're talking legal hurdles, legislative wrangling, probably a few public consultations where people will complain about the cost of parking. It's the kind of long game that would make even the most patient hockey coach tap his stick. You see these buildings, right? The ones that just sit there, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, like a permanent shrug in the urban fabric. I'm thinking of that old spot just past the Muttart Conservatory on the way into downtown, or some of those forgotten storefronts near the old Coliseum site. It's a testament to our particular brand of prairie stoicism that we just… accept them. But now, it seems, the patience has worn thin.
What This Means for Edmonton
* **A marathon, not a sprint:** Don't expect these buildings to magically disappear by next year's Fringe Festival. This is a multi-year endeavour. * **Focus on commercial properties:** This isn't about that one house down the street with the overgrown lawn, it's about the bigger, more visible commercial eyesores. * **More than just an eyesore:** Derelict properties often attract unwanted activity and can depress property values in surrounding areas, from Mill Woods to the west end.
It's a bold move, really. Trying to nudge these properties back into some semblance of utility. It’s a quiet acknowledgment that even in Edmonton, a city that prides itself on its resilience, there are limits to what we'll collectively tolerate just sitting there. Edmonton doesn't need your approval. Never did. But a little tidying up? That, we can get behind.
Darren Fedoruk, MiTL Sports Desk, Edmonton.
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