Mall Makeover
Will the transformation of Edmonton’s Heritage Mall into a new high-density development finally get commuters out of their cars?
BY Iain Ilich
Photography by Ellison T.O. Richmond
Although malls were once touted as the shopping experience of the future, that was never the case for Edmonton’s Heritage Mall. Today, it’s a big, empty white elephant in the city’s south end that’s been in decline for years, losing major tenants like Wal-Mart and Sears to surrounding shopping centres until all that remains are a few stubborn stores amid the mostly vacant hallways. With its passing, the city will lose a mall but gain a 43-acre chunk of prime suburban land, ripe for redevelopment. And instead of ceding the land to the sprawl that surrounds it, city councillors recently approved a plan to curb Edmonton’s outward expansion, recycling the site into a 5,000-resident community.
The Century Park development, led by ProCura Urban Properties and Westbank Projects, will, over the next 10 years of construction, create something akin to a satellite downtown core, with an office tower, apartment blocks, shops, restaurants and pedestrian-friendly parks and walkways. It’s an ambitious project for a place like Edmonton, where people are used to low-density living, large houses and even larger yards. And whether it will work is anyone’s guess.
Understandably, reaction to the proposal is mixed. One of its most surprising supporters is the Sierra Club of Canada, which views the redevelopment as keeping with its principles of smart growth. “It’s an environmental issue, and it’s a quality of life issue,” explains Charlie Richmond smart growth campaign co-ordinator of the group’s prairie chapter. “We’re attempting to constrain urban sprawl, which this city has lots of. Urban sprawl simply costs a lot more in greenhouse gasses, in terms of commute times and city infrastructure, whether it’s emergency services or transportation.”
While the plan is touted as a way to combat the city’s sprawl—which is now so bad that Chicago, a city with more than four times the population of Edmonton, actually has a smaller surface area—the lack of a rapid-transit link could create major traffic headaches. A transit extension to the area is still in the planning stages, and, if there are no snags, could substantially improve transit times to the area by 2009.
Transit will be the make-or-break aspect of this attempt at creating an “urban village” in the heart of suburbia. Since the development is aimed at the same group of middle- to upperincome residents who would normally buy into the suburban housing market, the potential problem lies in the fact that this group has traditionally seen nothing wrong with commuting by car to and from the downtown core. While convincing traditional suburbanites to make the leap into upscale condo living may not be particularly hard, developers may have trouble convincing affluent Edmontonians to make the leap into commuting by public transit.
An increase in population density may help make Edmonton a greener, smarter city, but only if those living in the denser areas accept the lifestyle changes associated with this compact, urban way of life. Ultimately, the success of Century Park, and of a renewed interest in urban living, will depend on Edmontonians kicking their addiction to cars and opting to take public transit instead of their SUVs. In a city whose hockey team is named the Oilers, it is quite the challenge indeed.
