Polynerd

I was crazy enough to plop myself down in a muggy airport hangar for two hours on Thursday, July 29 for a public forum thrown by Envision Edmonton to talk about the future of the Edmonton City Centre Airport.

Let me set the scene for this public forum. It was hot. It was muggy. Foodwise there were decent wraps but the cookies were a little stale. Demographically we're talking old, white and male. The young people in attendance all seemed to be blue shirted Envision Edmonton volunteers. There was a lot of tables set up to get people to sign their petition. They had fuzzy plans for redevelopment of the site. These involve LRT stations, VIA rail stations, more light industry and other stuff that I don't remember. Numbers and drawings were noticeably absent at the event but perhaps they'll be released online soon. UPDATE - The slides that they had at the forum are online here. Again, no capital projections, no renderings of buildings and nothing on the process. Just some top down maps of where they think the buildings they want to happen should exist.

I was fairly new to Edmonton when the city went through it's Close the Airport/No, Don't Close the Airport convulsions and wasn't very civically engaged at that moment. While I thought little of it at the time I was mostly for the closing of the airport. I think people, homes and families are much better downtown neighbors than private jets and light industry. I also didn't enjoy the hypocritical and self-righteous nature of the pro-airport side. I thought the issue was put to rest but as Al Pacino said in one the movies he appeared in "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." 

Charles, or Chuck, Allard is the son of Dr. Charles Allard, the founder of ITV (now Global Television) and is the man behind Envision Edmonton. Allard "who keeps a plane at the International but doesn't fly much" has set on this issue like a man grimly determined to beat this horse until it is well and truly deceased. He's on his way to collecting the amount of signatures required to put the issue to a plebiscite and has sunk a lot of time and money into this Envision Edmonton venture.

Chuck Allard, who is not the greatest public speaker, gave a little speech to start off and then we were off to questions from the general public and ostensibly, a panel discussion. This is where it can go south very fast. People really like to hear themselves speak at these things and the question to statement ratio is almost always insufferably in favour of the long, drawn out statement.

There was a lot of vitriol towards the current city council. A lot of people called Stephen Mandel stupid. One lady even brought out the "Won't somebody please think of the children" defence in regards to keeping the Aviation Musem open. There was a fair bit of applause anytime anyone seemed passionate and made some points in favour of the airport. All stuff you would expect at an event like this.

I asked a couple of questions. One was about the amount of medevac flights in comparison to the total amount of traffic. The response was 3,000 flights out of a total of 80,000 flights over a year. Of those 3000 about 10% of those flights are time-sensitive, that is, the patient is not stable. That's 0.375% of all total flights or around 300 people a year. Keep that in mind the next time you hear the pro-airport side mention the medevac argument. The other question was about the funding of Envision Edmonton. Allard replied that funding came from mostly small and medium sized businesses. I asked if the funding details would be released, he said perhaps. I asked him twice if he personally was funding Envision Edmonton. He answered yes the second time I asked it.

While it wasn't the best use of my time I'm glad I went for one reason. I figured out that these people don't represent me. I do not wish for their plans to succeed. In fact I hope they are stymied in all of their efforts. Let me reiterate. I want the Edmonton City Centre Airport closed and the land redeveloped for people with an eye towards mixed use, mixed income, transit-oriented walkable development with an emphasis on public over private space. I believe that that is a better use of this tremendous resource rather than the continuation of a small, private, operation that chews up far too much valuable real estate close to Edmonton's core.