City council asks Exhibition Lands plan be tweaked to keep event space around Expo Centre

Edmonton's city council wants to make sure future development at the old coliseum grounds can still accommodate festivals like KDays.

Edmonton’s city council is asking administration to reconsider part of its vision for the redevelopment of the Exhibition Lands into a residential area so major events such as summer’s KDays can still be staged there.

Work to transform the area once called Northlands has already begun.

The lands are home to the Edmonton Expo Centre as well as the vacant Coliseum, the former home of the NHL Oilers and venue for concerts whose demolition will begin this year, and the adjacent horse-racing track that’s now being torn down.

City planners estimate the full redevelopment of the large parcel of land around the Expo Centre – 1.5 square kilometres in total – will take about 30 years.

Explore Edmonton, the city’s tourism arm and operator of the Expo Centre, plans to keep staging major events such as the KDays summer fair, a mainstay at the exhibition grounds, for years to come.

The request that city administration tweak the plan came Tuesday from a five-part motion passed by city council’s Urban Planning Committee with several subsections.

Arlindo Gomes, Explore Edmonton’s vice-president of business development and venues management, said Tuesday his organization’s worry is the current plan for the long-term redevelopment project won’t leave enough space for it to hold such events.

“Our concern is that the scenarios as drafted don’t retain enough land or functionality to sustain Expo operations and major events over the long term,” Gomes told reporters at city hall on Tuesday.

As part of a deal reached last year to build an event park beside Rogers Place, the province is giving the city $55 million for the Exhibition Lands. Some of that money will pay to demolish the coliseum.

The plan was to offer that land to KDays for a decade or so while the area south of the Expo Centre becomes a neighbourhood, but Explore Edmonton says spreading the midway across 118 Avenue doesn’t work.

“They need to ensure that their site operates in a functional way to allow for the long-term sustainability of what they do day in and day out,” Mayor Andrew Knack told media on Tuesday.

City councillors have asked city staff for a revised plan that would see land surrounding the Expo Centre be set aside for event space instead of offering Explore Edmonton a cleared Coliseum site.

Under that plan, Explore Edmonton says it can keep hosting KDays through redevelopment without major disruption.

It would also see retaining the Coliseum site for transit-oriented, multi-use development as it’s adjacent to an LRT station that could either be redeveloped or moved just north of where it is now. The current plan is to build two new LRT stations, closer to where new homes will be built.

Now, staff will look at what it would cost to retrofit the existing station to get rid of the underground concourse and potentially connect it directly to the Expo Centre.

The urban planning committee’s request also asks staff to look into a new parkade or underground parking for the Expo Centre on site and asks for a second look at LRT stations.

“(The plan) essentially ensures that Explore Edmonton has enough space on site to continue being successful in our community, but it also ensures that we’re maximizing development opportunities and potential at Exhibition Lands,” Coun. Ashley Salvador said Tuesday.

“This is a really fantastic opportunity – it’s been an underutilized site for a really long time – to develop more transit-oriented opportunities, so mixed-use – housing, commercial – right next to LRT.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson