Building a triple bottom line into Blatchford
There used to be a time when we would see the words ‘scaled back’ next to a city-backed project and applaud City Council for making a prudent decision. So when a few headlines bubbled up last week that pegged the new Blatchford plans as ‘scaled back’, it was a refreshing change to see some Edmontonians aghast that we might be flirting once again with mediocrity.
How far we’ve come.
Certainly we have to watch our debt ceiling as we tackle projects like the Southeast LRT and rebuild our drainage infrastructure for changing weather. But that doesn’t mean we necessarily have to ‘mediocricize’ Blatchford.
Here’s my thinking:
The refinement from the first and extremely ambitious Perkins + Will plan for Blatchford to the current plan being recommended to Council are centred around four key changes.
The first is elongating a sci-fi inspired (my words) pneumatic garbage disposal system that essentially sucks all the waste from the community to one central location – the theory being, instead of multitudes of garbage trucks driving through the community, you only need one. As much I’d love to see one of these in action, investing $91 million in pneumatic waste collection doesn’t make a lot of sense to me when we are already making great strides in greening our fleet of city vehicles and diverting 90% our waste from landfill. With last week’s announcement on Enerkem’s waste-to-energy biofuel plant, we’re already ahead of nearly every city around the world on waste processing.
The second significant point of contrast is the removal of an on-site wastewater treatment facility from the initial plan. This facility would turn grey water from things like showers and sinks into reusable water for toilets in the community. Currently the Alberta Building Code prevents grey water reuse in public buildings, and while the idea is certainly attractive, the regulations haven’t kept up. Instead, we can save ourselves $25 million and tie into the existing drainage and treatment system, one that is already demonstrating innovation when it comes to water reuse on an industrial scale. We will also insist on low flow appliances throughout the community and build on our reputation as a water conserving city. There will still be rainwater capture for irrigation, and room for limited greywater re-use if the rules change.
The most significant change (~$157 million) is ruling out a biomass and deep geothermal district energy system. There are some fundamental questions whether a biomass plant is feasible given the amount of feedstock (i.e. wood chips) it would need to operate, and the transportation footprint it would require. And the deep geothermal just isn’t feasible. However, the Net Zero goal and the Carbon Neutral goal still apply, so the Blatchford project team is exploring two alternate district energy systems: a) a natural gas combined heat and power system that could save a considerable amount of greenhouse gas emissions; or b) a shallow geothermal ‘ambient exchange’ system that could heat and cool the community with renewable energy and offer the potential for full carbon neutral operation.
The fourth changes are adjustments to the layout and form. The high rises have been downscaled to mid-rises so that we’re not trying to compete with Downtown, and there is more townhouse or brownstone housing, which I think is key to bringing families with children to the area. The density remains approximately three times what would be found in a typical suburban development being built today, while still allowing us to improve sun exposure, and build stronger community connections. The park space has been reduced slightly but at 19% of the area it is still twice what would be found in a conventional suburban development.
I don’t think the recommended scenario for Blatchford is a compromise. In fact, I’d say it’s as close to a balanced triple bottom line – social, financial and environmental – as we could hope for. We’ll achieve the ambitious principles set out by council and still produce a reasonable return on our investment.
That’s prudent leadership.
What about the parks and lake? From what rendering I’ve seen, looks like the lake will be just another storm pond. We need more lakes (preferably with a beach) for boating and swimming within the city so that people don’t have to go to Pigeon Lake or Sylvan Lake for these experiences.
I am upset with this scaling back. I am a geographer, and my fiancée is an economist. From day one, I am not sure that I believed Blatchford would be built into the grandiose community council foresaw. I just felt it wasn’t feasible, or perhaps, just not today in 2014 Edmonton. Maybe 2020 Edmonton, who knows. Now that the project is set to scale back, I feel as if we are betraying ourselves and our own self-worth.
My fiancée certainly believed in the project, if not just from principal. Both of us have become quite invested in Edmonton, but primarily the CBD. I am a Human Geographer, and find cores fascinating, while she is from a much, much, much more dense of country, where the core is the only thing that can even begin to remind her of the towers in her homeland. We are enamored with the transformation that we watch in Edmonton on a day-to-day basis. I’m not sure that many other cities are like this place right now. Its exciting to be an Edmontonian, and because of this large, drastic mental change in the populous and gentrification occurring as a whole, it seems unfitting that we ought scale back our original intentions to have a groundbreaking environmental achievement in our city. It almost feels like an insult, at least to the two of us, that we cannot have these nice things.
Which leads me to our competitive nature with Calgary. This past weekend, a senior editor of The Atlantic, David Frum, was in Calgary for the Clean Air Strategic Alliance conference. He toured East Village and suggested that it was going to be something that lead the way in terms of urban design, giving great accolades to the architects of its design. While seemingly much less ambitious than Blatchford’s design and purpose, I have no idea why they should deserve all the fun and bragging rights. They are not the Capital.
My fiancée believes that we have already lost this project. If this development is built and is anything less than what we were initially promised, its a failure in her eyes. We’ve failed Edmonton and we’ve failed the world in being a leader. It isn’t every day that a city has an opportunity and the technology to build an entire neighbourhood from scratch near the centre of its city. In our opinion, we are squandering the potential to lead by design. Think of the press the project would receive if on target; “Edmonton leads way in urban design and planning, etc! Edmonton, Edmonton, Edmonton: The healthy capital.”
The one change I do agree with, and have complained about silently in my head since day one, was the high-rises. You are correct in believing they need not compete with downtown. Admitting that, however, it would be nice to have at least one tower.
I am happy Blatchford is becoming more than a field, however, I do believe we need to test and exceed our limits and expectations. It isn’t like the next council is going to be so gung-ho with the spending– it isn’t an Edmontonians nature, I suppose– and thus I voted for having at least one high-spending term.
Mayor Iveson,
I appreciate your desire to lead the city to a new place, to drive this project forward is fantastic however today’s conversation at Council sounds like the project is at risk. One thing I have not heard in the whole conversation, in the design and direction is the possibility of making this part of the city an Innovation District. Brookings Institute ( just yesterday ) released a report about the incredible things happening in Barcelona, Boston, Chattanooga and so many other GREAT, Globally competitive cities in the world. Lets dream for a moment, what if this part of the city had Gigabit internet, something the city could implement or partner with someone to implement, what if we built a plan with business, and academic do drive Innovation, to assist companies to collaborate so they can compete globally, after all that would be a globally competitive city.
Hoping that Blatchford becomes reality and that it is a high tech heart of this great city.
Brookings report is here http://www.brookings.edu/about/programs/metro/innovation-districts
Don, I think the city makes a good compromise here. Understanding tradeoffs is key to effective decision making around sustainability. The financial savings from a biomass plant on-site would likely have a far bigger impact towards achieving sustainability if it were directed into a feed-in tariff program for the city as a whole to promote conversions to solar energy for households and businesses (for example). Spending public money beyond the point of effectiveness to ensure the ‘worldclassness’ of a specific development isn’t prudent.
Dear Mayor and Council,
It has been both interesting and frustrating to follow many of the discussions and directions this project has taken since the City – correctly and belatedly – chose to close the City Centre Airport.
During those airport discussions, I was – and remain – convinced that closing the airport was the right thing to do for our city as a city, not as a potential revenue generating project for the city. I believe I am on record as saying that closing the airport would be a good investment for the city even if we did nothing but turn the site into the world’s largest off-leash dog park. I will go on record today as saying that the world’s largest off-leash dog park remains a better alternative than simply approving another typical subdivision plan albeit one that is brown-field and not green-field. Preserving the opportunity for future generations to do the right thing instead of squandering the opportunity to see the right thing done based on expedient short-term financial decisions would be a better choice.
Much has been made of a 2008 report to council that showed one of the development options providing a potential $517 million dollar development profit to the city of Edmonton. That figure received a great deal of exposure at the time and many used it as a reason to proceed with the closure and redevelopment of the lands. We are hearing the same thing today but listening to that rationale completely ignores the other two options in that same report, one of which projected a net loss of $9 million dollars on the redevelopment of those lands. For additional perspective, even at the high end of that -9 to 500 million dollar range, if amortized over the next 30 – 50 years, that revenue stream, whether received or forgone, would have no substantive effect on the kind of city we are trying to build when our current gross budget is 2.25 billion a year (67.5 billion over 30 years and112.5 billion over 50) and that’s ignoring the fact that ongoing property tax revenues to the city aren’t much different for any of the options (70 – 90 million a year, the equivalent of a complete recover of the maximum in that range in the first 5.5 to 7.5 years)
Closure of the airport and the redevelopment of the lands was never about maximizing the financial return. On two fronts it was about doing what is best for the city in terms of city building and there were two pieces to that. First was closure of the airport. Second was to do the right thing on those lands not just as a neighborhood – albeit a large neighborhood – but for the city. In determining the right thing, we should not default to the most expedient financial option. We should not be foolish with our limited tax revenues but foregoing windfall income if need be in order to build the right thing is the right choice.
I have always been saddened to see plaques and awards in the various board rooms and public space for “Best Non-Implemented Plan”. If we don’t implement them, that is the true waste of both tax revenues and potential. Please don’t let the master planning for Blatchford slip into that same rabbit hole.
We can probably do without the pneumatic garbage collection and the district energy and we can make provisions for site and neighborhood “net zero” achievability without negatively affecting the planned and built form of Blatchford.
What we cannot do without are the site features and amenities that were an integral part of what was both chosen and sold (and bought by a majority of Edmontonians) for Blatchford. Those things that were presented (like Hawrelak Park) as city amenities, not just neighborhood amenities. The excavation of a recreational lake and use of that material to create an accessible landmark of height at the centre of the city that would be open to the public as opposed to the only current comparables – our downtown buildings and a dump site at 170th Street and the Yellowhead Trail. We were offered more and we agreed to pay for it. Those things need to remain sacrosanct.
[B][I]It’s not enough to say “it will still have more park space than a conventional suburban subdivision”. Conventional suburban subdivisions are not expected to provide city parks and amenities with the possible exception of their rec centres which are paid for by the city overall, not charged back to that neighborhood’s development. The removal of the recreational lake and the scaling down the height components at Blatchford have been presented in some forums as “challenging” because the lake would have to deal with a potential two meter change in the water level during the occasional storm event. Horrors – think of the children. How do they ever manage to create recreational opportunities in BC or the Maritimes where the change in water levels can be more than twice that twice a day? These things aren’t challenges to be avoided, they are opportunities that need to be met and addressed if Blatchford is to be successful. Might some of those choices be expensive? Possibly, but they will probably be no more expensive that recreating those urban and recreational possibilities elsewhere in the city so there are no real savings by not creating and maintaining them here.[/I][/B]
I would hope at the end of your discussions today you will have the courage to hold administration’s feet to the fire and insist that they deliver what was promised to the citizens of Edmonton and that you will acknowledge that doing so will require your support politically and financially in order for them to do so.
Blatchford should never be the recipient of one of those “Best Non-implemented Plan” awards and now is the time to ensure it never qualifies for one of those awards.
Sincerely,
Ken
Good piece, and a very reasonable approach given the realities of the moment, Mr. Mayor.
The problem with all this is that the City and the previous mayor grossly oversold this proposal to citizens with numbers that were, in the case of land sales, inflated by over a factor of 10. If these dollars were in place, then the novel environmental aspects of the plan, or equally novel alternatives would have been possible.
So, ultimately the question is: who is accountable for this egregious “error”, an “error” so obscene that it is hard to imagine it being anything other than fraud or gross incompetence. We are often told that holding our leaders accountable happens only at election time. Well what about the $450 million that was promised and didn’t materialize?
What is required is a mechanism to ensure that projects are NEVER oversold to citizens. Planning sanely, honestly and conservatively should be required. We would all be happier and better off to be promised a conservative project and to receive more than expected when the actuals are determined rather than the other way around.
Perhaps a cultural change at City Hall that you can spearhead?
Regarding the Blanchford GREEN Development, if Edmonton can’t afford the total $200 million for the development, why not publicly solicit money from the high level people opposed to the Oilsands development???? Let’s see if they talk the walk!!
Mr. Iveson,
A personal anecdote regarding the rejection of the Deep Geothermal Energy project:
I am reminded of a conversation that I had with an University of Alberta engineering student over a decade ago: I asked him, with all the new drilling technologies being developed at that time, if it would be possible to make a closed loop connected deep underground, where cold water going in one end would come heated out the other. After all: ‘delta t’ is all you really need. He agreed that the drilling technology available at the time would be more than sufficient to engineer such a system, but that such proposals would not be seriously considered until there was absolutely no other option, because too many people had too much invested in the status quo.
And that was almost twenty years ago so it seems to me highly unlikely that, as you have claimed, “the ‘technology’ isn’t there yet”; more like the ‘impetus’.
The real choice for you Mr.Iveson is whether or not you want to be an actual leader, or merely a politician.
Good Luck,
Sean Grice
I can live without the garbage disposal and geotherm but please bring back the highrises, density and the larger park/hillside and a true lake. This is a once in several lifetime opporunity that should benefit all citizens for decades, even centuries to come. Din’t let it continue to slide to bland suburbia with a slough. And please have the website take down the hype around the international design award. It is no longer applicable. We saw the brass ring and decided it was too hard. This will be extremely satisfactory.