Over at the corner of 127th street and 114th avenue there stands a derelict building that I discovered earlier today.
It's a pretty tall building, surrounded by the smallish homes in the Wellington area. Er, but wait a second, why do we need to tear down the airport for new development when nobody seems interested in the current development?
Likewise over by the Fountain Tire downtown on 103rd avenue there are some empty gutted out warehouse buildings. Even with the recent boom nobody was interested in them.
I think its time people like Mayor Mandel came clean and told us exactly which developments have been hindered by the airport. Most of the new construction in Edmonton is a lot smaller than 5-6 stories. If the entire city was made up up precisely 7 story construction, then perhaps they have a case, but when condos in Wild Rose or Castledowns peak at 3 or 4 floors I'm pretty sure that tearing down the airport won't change that.
After all Mr. Mayor, if the city really wanted taller buildings and denser development they could already zone for it. This airport talk is just a bunch of crap.
Update, 10:33pm: Colby Cosh linked a tweet to this post:
why doze a busy airport when there's already acres of derelict industrial/retail space nearby?This of course brings up a totally other interesting topic of discussion, one that I remember a pilot friend bringing up years ago when Edmonton Airports Authority had a big exciting talk about how business at Edmonton International had gone up "thanks to amalgamation". Of course the question isn't whether its gone up or not, its whether the air traffic into and out of Edmonton airports is greater with amalgamation than without, and nothing the Edmonton Regional Airport Authority talked about covered that topic.
How much busier could the City Centre airport be? Why not, with congestion being a new-ish problem, Blatchford Field can't handle some of the traffic. Why are we not utilizing a smaller airport that can handle a lot of smaller direct traffic to a location closer to downtown? Aren't we worried about carbon footprints? City Centre Airport is required to fly half empty planes, and is still staying alive.
If you want some other reasons to keep it alive, aren't we trying to be a cosmopolitan city? What's this list full of? A list Edmonton may soon find itself off.
